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Bye Bye Pat Robertson [1]
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Date: 2023-06-10
I first encountered The 700 Club as a teenager in the early seventies.
They broadcast out of a UHF station in Virginia, that carried as far as North Carolina, where we went for vacation. Sometimes we’d see him, hosting what was, then, a combination prayer meeting and telethon. We thought it was pretty ridiculous.
By the late seventies, Robertson had gone nationwide, and, while he was still fundraising, he had something like a sophisticated talk show, with him as host, behind a desk, like Johnny Carson, only very different.
My dad was an insomniac, and he would, sometimes tune in to the show, amused that people still believed in demons, in the twentieth century.
There had been other TV evangelists, before Robertson. Some, like Oral Roberts, were faith healers. Some, like Billy James Hargis, were political. (Hargis was shameless with fundraising. He one asked his followers to borrow money from a loan company, if they couldn’t afford to donate to his ministries.
But Robertson, the son of a senator, and a law school graduate, was more sophisticated than most of his peers.
He may have loved luxury as much as the Bakkers. But he was careful not to use donations to his ministry to pay for his horses, Cadillacs and stately home. He had a business selling nutritional supplements that paid for his cars and his horses.
He was equally careful in his private life. If he cheated on his wife, he was never caught at it.
When he ran for president, it came out that Mrs. Robertson had been pregnant when he married her. But he never apologized. He acknowledged his sin, with the same cheerful charm he used to con millions of old people out of their savings.
He ran in 1988, because Ronald Reagan, who never belonged to a church, but made good use of Evangelical Christians, couldn’t go for a third term. (There were hints that he should. Mercifully that didn’t happen.) He won in the Iowa caucuses, putting terror in the hearts of decent Americans everywhere.
Before his presidential run, he advertised himself as a former Marine and combat veteran of the Korean War. During the campaign it came out that his father, who was a senator at the time, had pulled strings, and he had spent his tour of duty as liquor officer for a unit that never saw combat.
He didn’t laugh that one off.
He didn’t mention it.
Robertson was good at sweeping his mistakes under the rug.
In the eighties he promoted “Operation Rescue”, sending mobs to harass abortion providers and just about any woman who went anywhere near a clinic. (A clinic near me shared a building with a dentist’s office. One of my friends was escorting women in to get root canal.)
The so called, “sidewalk counsellors”, were aggressive, and sometimes violent, but very good at playing the martyr, when they found themselves on a sofa talking to Pat.
They would spend time in prison and acquire criminal records. But the man who had been named Marion Gordon Robertson, stayed above it all.
In the nineties, he declared war on President Clinton, promoting every insane rumor that circulated on the budding internet.
His message; fear the government. Not our government, representatives that we elected, but the government, a large, impersonal entity that didn’t care about us. That was controlled by leftist radicals and demons. That would force your children to be Gay atheists, unless his viewers gave him more of their money.
He created dangers where none existed. He warned parents of the hazards of Halloween parties, “He Man” cartoons, Mighty Mouse, Dungeons and Dragons, Ninja Turtles, Girl Scouts and Star Wars.
He promoted the “Satanic Panic” of the eighties and nineties. Having law enforcement agents on his show, to warn his viewers that their children were at risk from Satan worshippers.
He had a few survivors of Satanic cults, who may have been telling the truth and may have been off their meds.
He was big on demonic possession. Evangelicals frequently are. Regularly, in October, he would have survivors of demonic attacks on his show along with people who claimed to be former witches.
People still remember how he, cheerfully, blamed feminists, witches and other leftists for the 9/11 attacks.
September 11 was a kind of godsend for Pat. The fall of the Soviet Union had deprived him of the Red Menace, and he really needed an enemy. He’d tried making the New Age movement into a threat for American democracy. But New Agers are silly.
Muslims, not just Islamic militants, all Muslims, were a much better foe.
He could make sure that all his viewers, and donors, knew that President Obama’s middle name was Hussein. He wasn’t being racist, of course, none of Obama’s detractors ever were. But he did have to suggest that our president was a closet Islamist.
He leapt on the Trump bandwagon, and Trump, twice divorced, a casino owner, and a man who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, was happy to use Evangelicals to get into the White House, and then stay there, even after he lost the 2020 election. (Though Robertson predicted he’d win a second term.)
In January of 2021, he promoted a “Jericho March” around the Capitol.
Shortly after that, he retired.
He would be on, periodically, to answer questions from his fans. The questions were almost entirely about religious matters. He stayed out of politics.
His son, Gordon, had taken over much of the show, years before. Gordon lacks his father’s cheerful optimism. Pat Robertson was a born grifter. He could have had a great career selling real estate or used cars.
His son is an introvert, who seems uncomfortable with his father’s message of happy hate and fear.
It will be interesting to see where The 700 Club goes from here.
Money is tight. Their elderly donors are dying off.
Most Americans favor legal abortion and Gay rights. Fewer of us identify as Christian. We aren’t as scared of demons as we are of the gas bill.
Marion Gordon Robertson, commonly known as Pat, gave us Republican Jesus. He made saints and martyrs out of hate mongers and terrorists. He told his viewers that Christ, who was born in a stable and rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, wanted them to drive Cadillacs and live in McMansions. Now he is answering to a God he genuinely believed in, and, I suspect he is very surprised at what he has to answer for.
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