Pat, Have You Been Talking To God Again? (add'l comments 9/1)

As per AP, on his 700 Club TV show (I missed yesterday's show, dammit), Religious Right leader & schizophrenic Pat Robertson, who says that Venezuela is a "launching pad for communist infiltration & Muslim extremism" (yes, I too think of Catholic South America as being a major Islamic fundie breeding ground) said "If [President Hugo Chavez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really aught to go ahead and do it." I'm sure HBO's Bill Maher & The Comedy Channel's Daily Show with Jon Stewart aught to have a ball with this one.

Who are YOU Pat, to suggest that another human be killed because of his political stance? I'd like to see him and Castro out of power but, short of their countries attacking us or harboring terrorists, they are sovereign states (like Iraq) whom we have no right to attack just because we're the righteous US.

Maybe your tuner's a little off, Pat; maybe that was former Prez James Monroe you were chatting with.

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9/1/05

Cox News Service reports that the Rev. Lennox Yearwood, leader of the "Hip Hop Caucus" (are they kidding?), and others rallied outside the CBN offices demanding that the FCC look into revoking CBN's license.

It's good to see other religious leaders (though does the "Hip Hop Caucus" have any believability with a name like that?) speaking out against Pat's idiocy. Guys like Pat give REAL Christians a bad rep (who was it who blasted Islam? Was that Pat or one of his pals?).

Two problems, Len. First, as far as I know, CBN is a network and not a licensee, so the FCC has no jurisdiction. They COULD fine CBN affiliates but not CBN. Len and crew compared this situation to the Janet Jackson "Wardrobe Malfunction" of last years' Hyperbole. Ain't the same thing, folks. However silly it might be to get excited about something so dumb and harmless as a part of the body showing on TV (kids all over were permanently, psychologically, damaged; many joined the Hip Hop Caucus), the point was that someone had done something considered obscene on a show transmitted on The Public's resources called Broadcast Television channels. The FCC has a duty to control these resources (even if it wastes its time and our tax dollars going after channels that aired Bono saying "Fucking" - nobody's been threatened for playing on plublic radio channels "...who the fuck are you..." from Who Are You by The Who).

Secondly, Pat has a right to say whatever he wants as long as it isn't libelous (and I don't think foreigners like Senor Chavez are protected by US libel laws) or advocating violence or the overthrow of the gummint. In fact, letting him SAY these things helps him look worse and worse, so let him dig a hole. You can't get ANY government organization to prosecute someone for a stupid statement like that.

I understand that Chavez asked the US gummint to arrest Pat for his comment; sorry Hugo, but in THIS country, we can say what we want, we can state our opinions, as long as it doesn't allege an untruth about someone or try to cause disruption of society.