Dear Pat Robertson, STFU

Last updated on: January 15, 2010 at 4:24 pm by Fred Clark

Dear Pat Robertson, STFU 2010-01-15T16:24:06-05:00 Fred Clark

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Several elegant responses to Pat Robertson's latest obscenities have already been posted. See, for example:

1. Adam Serwer at Tapped (via), who cites a pertinent passage from Frederick Douglass.

2. Haitian Ambassador Raymond Joseph on Rachel Maddow.

Shorter Raymond Joseph: Haiti to America — You're welcome. Glad to see you're enjoying Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming. Don't mention it, really.

(Bonus quip: "Behold Pat Robertson: The unintended consequence of the First Amendment.")

I'm accustomed to Pat Robertson being an unholy fool, but his remarks following the Haitian earthquake were astonishing even for him. By attributing Haiti's suffering to a supposed "pact with the devil," he manages to break two commandments simultaneously — both bearing false witness against his neighbor and taking the name of God in vain.

That sort of double word score is typical Robertson fare, until one appreciates how utterly and explicitly he takes sides here. By labeling the revolutionary enslaved people who founded the Haitian democracy as literally demonic, Robertson sides with slave owners and against democracy, liberty and human rights. He declares that he and his god are on the side of oppression and that liberation is the Devil's work.

Wow. That this is contrary to the Bible Robertson claims to read is obvious to every tourist who has ever filed past the Liberty Bell here in Philly ("Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof").

But it's worse than that. He's not just contradicting some bit of scriptural arcana here, he's cutting to the core of Christianity and setting himself in direct opposition to it. When Jesus stood to read in the synagogue he looked over the whole of the scriptures and selected the one thing he wanted to say out of all that he might have read and he read this as his motto, his mission statement, the signature and standard of his ministry and its meaning:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Pat Robertson reverses every line of that. He perverts it into its opposite. His words, therefore, were not just "stupid" — as White House spokesman Robert Gibbs rightly called them. They were anathema, blasphemy, an abomination.

Part of what's going on here — apart from Robertson's being both evil and barking mad — is that he's trying to make sense of the world for his frightened followers. Whenever inexplicable tragedy occurs, Robertson rushes in to make his unique sort of sense out of the senselessness and to reassure his listeners that they will never have to suffer. Suffering, he explains, is something that only happens to Other People. These Other People, he explains, are suffering because they deserve it.

They made a pact with the devil. They disobeyed their masters. They murdered babies. They were gay or tolerated others who were. Avoid such sins, Robertson tells his followers, and you will avoid suffering — you will be saved from hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, poverty, job loss, hair loss, eczema, acid reflux, PAD and mortality itself.

This, again, flagrantly contradicts that Bible Robertson claims as his "authority." Rip out the book of Job and shred it to confetti.

And that other little tangential point — the bit where Jesus suffers and dies and very God of very God is humbled unto death, even the death of the cross? You can shred that too.

Pat Robertson says that if Jesus suffered then he must have deserved it. Probably made a pact with the devil or something.

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