Birmingham Blues

One of Pat Robertson’s flunkies must have pointed out that his call yesterday for the assassination of Hugo Chavez was caught on tape. Pat spent the morning denying what he said, even though it had been replayed on every news station in the country, and maybe the world. You’d think the head of a broadcasting network and TV show host would be aware of that, but Pat was apparently hoping that God would destroy the evidence and wipe our collective memory. I expect God was too busy feeling disgusted to bother, and Pat’s been forced to apologize for his inflammatory remarks. But not to worry; he says he wasn’t serious. He was just speaking out of exasperation.

Believe me, Pat, that when I say I wish you’d stop calling yourself a Christian, I too am speaking out of exasperation. And I’m also dead serious.

Pat Robertson is now trying to back off of his statement that the US government should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Now he says he was misinterpreted. Sure. Of course he was.

“I said our special forces could take him out. Take him out could be a number of things including kidnapping,” Robertson said on his “The 700 Club” television program.

“There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted,” Robertson added.

Uh huh. Well, I guess that would be okay. We’ll just send in some operatives and KIDNAP THE PRESIDENT OF A SOVEREIGN NATION. Nothing wrong with that. It might even be cheaper than assassination.

Pat seems to have forgotten the power of videotape. Media Matters has him right here, advocating assassination, not kidnapping.

“You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United … This is in our sphere of influence, so we can’t let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

The clip of his crazy remarks has been all over TV, and I’m sure it’s done a lot to improve our image in the international community.

Oh, I forgot. We are supposed to be God’s new chosen people, so we don’t have to care what anyone else thinks. Just ask Pat. Or Jerry (“Blow them all away in the name of the Lord”) Falwell. If these two keep calling themselves Christians, we’re going to have to come up with a new name for those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus.

Or, even better, the Christian community could stand up and speak out and take back our faith from these charlatans.

Thanks to Independent for the pointer.