Pat Robertson -- a columnist's best friend

From Where I Sit

By Bradley Hart

HERE’S AN OPEN secret about my job: it can be tough to write a weekly column.

I’m not talking about putting the words on paper (or, rather, the computer screen) – I’m talking about finding subject matter every week that’s easy to explain and discuss in the space I’m given.

That’s why this week I was ecstatic to find famed and vociferous TV evangelist Pat Robertson in the news again.

Earlier this week, Robertson warned on his TV show, “The 700 Club”, that Muslims are planning “world domination” and are inspired by “demonic power.”

Reverend Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State was quick to denounce the comments, calling them “grossly irresponsible,” according to the BBC.

In a world where the United States and other western nations are fighting Islamic extremism all over the globe, it’s surely unhelpful to make statements that sound like they stem from either the Crusades or, if you were to change the context and subject only slightly, one of Osama bin Laden’s statements themselves.

You might recall that Robertson’s reputation still hasn’t fully recovered from the last time he said something of almost blinding idiocy back in January when he proposed that stroke-ridden Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was feeling God’s wrath for ordering the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The Israelis, for their part, pulled out of a $50 million deal Robertson was trying to cut on behalf of a group that’s seeking to build a Biblical theme park near the Sea of Galilee.

Even before calling God’s judgment down on Sharon, Robertson opined late last year that the U.S. should try to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a frequent critic of American policies who claims, among other things, the CIA has tried to assassinate him and depose his government. The State Department denounced Robertson’s remarks within a day.

In both cases, Robertson apologized a few days after the gaffes.

I’d be interested to hear Pat Robertson’s theological basis for these statements. I’ve read quite a bit of the New Testament and I’m pretty sure Jesus never calls for the assassination of foreign leaders or accuses the followers of other faiths of being devil worshippers. But, then again, maybe Pat Robertson has a different version of the Bible than me.

As it looks now, Robertson is simply an endless font of stupidity that, while deserving of his First Amendment rights, may in fact be harming the nation’s national security through his inflammatory remarks that almost assuredly serve to further alienate America from the rest of the world —let alone create or embolden terrorists.

Setting the record straight

Finally, I’d like to make a correction to last week’s column on South Dakota’s new abortion ban. Towards the end of the piece I incorrectly stated that the law fails to make an exception for the life of a mother seeking the procedure. In fact the law does make an explicit exception for cases where the life of a woman is deemed to be in jeopardy. I apologize for the error.

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