If Your Grandparent Was a Fortune-Teller, You're Probably Cursed (And Other Pat Robertson Tales)

Pat Robertson has said something noteworthily extremist every day of his four-day workweek—I was right to want Hugo Chávez assassinated! It's un-American to force a business to serve gay people if they don't want to! Impeach Eric Holder!—but the more influential Robertson monitors, Right Wing Watch and The Raw Story, must have gotten tired of covering his shenanigans because they left all of Thursday's ridiculousness on the table.  So allow me to fill in for them.


The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Doesn't Exist, Apparently

Thursday's top story was Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's veto of Senate Bill 1062, which would have allowed business owners to deny services to whomever their religion tells them they shouldn't have to serve.  But really we're just talking about gays and lesbians and gay/lesbian marriages, because that's still "acceptable" discrimination in some quarters.  So here's how Pat Robertson kicked off the show:

“If you're in New York and you're a homosexual and you're a bartender, you can refuse service to a Republican or a born-again Christian, or somebody you don't like, with impunity!  No problem.  If you happen to live in California, and you run a bakery, and you happen to be a born-again Christian, and you say, 'I don't want to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding,' you can go to jail.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.  You know, the law that says,

All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services…and accommodations of any place of public accommodation…without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

So, no, that gay bartender in gay New York can not refuse service to a born-again Christian with impunity.  (Republicans? They're fair game, I guess.)  Also, no one goes to jail for discrimination.  It's a civil violation.  That's Pat Robertson, Yale Law School graduate, everybody!

This tale also includes the Fall of America:

“Well…what's happening in America is we have changed the fundamental way we view morality.  We've gone away from a Biblically based standard to a standard based on what Hollywood has to say or Madison Avenue or whoever.  And it looks like there was overwhelming opposition to gay marriage, and that has now shifted, so probably a majority of Americans say, ‘It's okay if gays want to get married, that's their business.’ ”

If Your Grandparent Was a Witch or Fortune-Teller, You're Probably Cursed

A viewer asks Pat if he believes in generational curses, like how families have histories of cancer and diabetes.  Well, Pat responds, cancer and diabetes, that's probably more genetic than spiritual. (Probably.)  But spiritual generational curses are real:

“I do believe that there are such things as generational curses.  If some grandparent was a witch or a fortune-teller, or engaged in the black arts, the chances are that curse will come down the family.  And it needs to be broken by specific prayer.”

God Can Grow Back a Limb—A Preacher I Knew Said It Happened!

In response to another viewer born without a right hand, Pat says That's okay, you're already spiritually whole, and people can live fulfilling lives with disabilities like yours.  But if you want a new hand, God can give you one:

“Can God grow you a hand?  That's a creative miracle, and it happens.  I remember T. L. Osborn was talking about a meeting he had in Ghana.  A man at the edge of the meeting didn't have a whole leg, the leg was cut off at the knee: whole leg grew out, foot grew out, toes grew out, toenails grew, the whole thing.  Right there, while he was preaching about Jesus.”

(Why do these "miracles" only happen in faraway places like Ghana and not here in the good ol' U.S. of A.?  Because only simple people are open to miracles.  Westerners are too educated and sophisticated to accept them.)


The Antichrist Might Be a Jew—But He Could Be a Muslim!  Or Even European!

Dear Pat, I've been looking into End Times prophecy and it seems to me that the antichrist is going to be a Jew… Do you think that makes sense?

“I think it may make some sense… I think there are antichrist figures, there's an antichrist spirit, and it's a spirit of rebellion against God, and who knows.  I certainly think the modern-day Islamic people, the people from Islam of the early days at least, had an antichrist spirit—they speak against Christ!  And there are others who do the same thing.  So: is he Jewish, is he Arab, is he North African, is he from Europe?  Where is he?  I don't think we know.  But what you said can make plenty of sense.  But I wouldn't spend a lot of time meditating on it.”

Yeah, it's probably a Jew that will bring about the End Times.  But don't worry about it.

CBN News Reverse-Engineers an Attack on a Climate-Change Scientist to Smear Global-Warming Proponents

Today's broadcast of The 700 Club featured a segment by Pat Robertson's own CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) News on "global cooling," an extreme-minority belief (of course) that not only is global warming false, but that the Earth is actually getting colder.  I'm not going to pretend to have the scientific bona fides to thoroughly debunk this theory, so I'll just direct you to desmogblog.com and their collection of articles on global cooling instead.

But it wasn't enough for Robertson's band of merry right-wing Christian journalists reporters to flog the latest line of b.s. from the anti-warming crowd.  CBN actually took a right-wing slur against a climate-change scientist, flipped it, and claimed it was global-warming proponents making the accusation.

“Climate-change skeptics have been…compared to Holocaust deniers, and even child molesters.”

I've heard the first charge before, and yes, a couple of newspaper columnists made that comparison to drive home the point that the anti-warming crowd is denying the truth in the face of clear and overwhelming evidence.  (Let me say that as a Jew, I take no offense at this comparison.)

But child molester?  Apparently, someone said that too, about Professor Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University:

”Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science.”

EXCEPT: Michael Mann is a global-warming advocate.  The child-molester comparison was not made against a climate-change skeptic, but BY a climate-change skeptic—Rand Simberg of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think-tank that refutes global warming.  The ultraconservative National Review liked the child-molester comparison so much that they devoted an article to it on their blog.  (Simberg has since wiped the quote cited above from the post on CEI's blog, but the National Review article retains the citation. Dr. Mann is currently suing both CEI and National Review for defamation.)

Did CBN deliberately flip the attack on a global-warming advocate into persecution against climate-change deniers, or just misread it?  Who knows.  Maybe a CBN reporter saw someone say something beyond the pale—and assumed it had to come from the left.  They're the ones who make such comments.  Not us on the right! We don't say such things! WE'RE THE ONES WHO ARE PERSECUTED.

Or maybe they just lied in the hopes that no one would notice.  (There's not much critical analysis of CBN, Pat Robertson, and The 700 Club that doesn't originate from Right Wing Watch or this blog no one's reading yet.)

I did also like the part of the "global cooling" story that suggested the Earth was in fact warming up through 1998, implying that global warming used to be valid.  Which was the position CBN took back then, right?  Of course not:

(Note that the person interviewed in that segment right after "science seems to indicate otherwise" is Fred L. Smith, another Competitive Enterprise Institute figure—the founder, in fact—who holds degrees in theoretical mathematics and political science.  Curious how they couldn't find, you know, an actual climate scientist to make those points.)

Finally, I like how CBN still calls them "climate-change skeptics" even though they believe the Earth is getting colder now.  Keeping that terminology just proves that they're grabbing hold of any anti-warming theory that comes down the pike.

See Also—Robertson: Climate Change Is a Myth Created by Money-Hungry Scientists (Right Wing Watch)

Graphic Credit: desmogblog.com

CBN Prayer Counselors Are Available to Save You from Psychics, Planned Parenthood, Satanism—Wait, Back Up

(This aired on the April 15, 1997 broadcast of The 700 Club, but it's the kind of promotional spot that could have been produced months or years before and brought out every so often.)

The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) operates a bank of prayer counselors who are available 24/7 for adherents and 700 Club viewers who are seeking support and guidance in times of crisis…and great, I'm already writing a press release for them.  (CBN is Pat Robertson's media operation, of which The 700 Club is its flagship program.)  Anyway, you get the idea: anyone can call in to talk to a CBN prayer counselor about whatever, and I understand that they usually take the opportunity to ask for your name and address so they can add you to their mailing list and start sending you fundraising letters.  Win-win!

But this video spot was produced not so much to inform viewers that there are prayer counselors who are just waiting for your call, but to remind viewers of the kind of thing The 700 Club does with the money you give them, and if you're not a member of The 700 Club, won't you join today?  Because ultimately, all of these promotional spots are about getting people to give them money.

Of course, not all of them mention Planned Parenthood in the same breath as Satanism:

“What if the CBN counseling center wasn't here?  What are the alternatives for those desperately seeking answers?  Psychic hotlines…New Age gurus…crystal balls and tarot cards…Planned Parenthood…meditation…even Satanism.  People are searching now more than ever, and they risk falling into the clutches of the occult.”

There is actually a not-inconsiderable strain of "Planned Parenthood is occultist" thinking running through Christian fundamentalism that is little more than a Google search away.  Accusations that Margaret Sanger believed in the occult (and of course if Sanger believed something, then it necessarily infests all of Planned Parenthood, decades after her death); the purported historical roots of abortion in witchcraft and paganism; "this abortion clinic I know is totally occultist, you guys!"  It's like they think Citizen Ruth was a documentary, and all us pro-choicers are lesbians who pray to the moon.

Now, for all I've seen of Pat Robertson, I've never heard him say anything about Planned Parenthood being occultist, and you'd think that if he did believe that, he'd trot that out every chance he got.  (Instead, he usually pushes the tired "Margaret Sanger favored eugenics just like the Nazis" argument, which is an oversimplification of the facts.)  So I won't say that Pat believes this "Planned Parenthood is occultist" jazz.  But it looks like someone at CBN did.