"Wait a minute, I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should, quote, "take him out," and "take him out" can be a number of things including kidnapping. There are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time."
--Self Proclaimed, led by God evangelist and founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Christian Coalition of America--Pat Robertson on his show The 700 Club when trying to backtrack from his comments about calling for the assassination of Chavez, and obviously misleading people about his prior comments on August 22, 2005.
"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...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."
--Pat Robertson, during his editorial on his show The 700 Club, August 22, 2005. He did indeed use the word "assassination."
"I met with him [President George W. Bush] down in Nashville before the Gulf War [sic: the American-led Iraq war that began in March 2003] started. And he was the most self-assured man I ever met in my life...And I was trying to say, Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties. Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties," replied President Bush.
--Pat Robertson, on CNN's Paula Zahn's Now, October 19, 2004.
"The truth was I misspoke. What he basically said is our troops are so well equipped and so powerful that casualties would be at a minimum."
--Pat Robertson, on Fox News program Hannity & Colmes, when asked about his previous comments made on CNN insisting that Bush assured him there would be no casualties in Iraq; very different from his above quote.
"George Bush has the favor of heaven...God has honored him."
--Pat Robertson, on Fox News program Hannity & Colmes, when speaking about the recent election of George W. Bush over John Kerry, November 4, 2004.
Crazy and outrageous quotes by conservative right-wing pundit and spokesperson Pat Robertson are nothing new. I don't even relate this sort of hypocrisy or falsehoods to the Republican Party whatsoever. Both sides have their wacko's. But I do want to draw attention to the fact that the White House (Bush) has not come out and distanced itself from Robertson one bit. The State Department, Pentagon and the GOP have. Bush, however, has yet to condemn Robertson's remarks or actions. Maybe it's because Bush is still busy with his third vacation, or actually isn't aware of what Robertson said. Though, I do think it's time for Bush to put some distance between himself and the Christian right nutjobs.
Another point I want to draw attention to is the fact that if anything doesn't jive with Bush and his moral authority for this country, it is immediately attacked by the White House, State Department, GOP and the crazy right wing associations that are the Bush base. If Robertson is allowed to discredit himself as well as the president with his outrageous and untruthful remarks, then anyone opposing this war or any form of dissent should also be allowed without question or any larger burden of proof that the Bush base is allowed to operate with.
8.24.2005
Moral Values and the State of the Union
Posted by Chris at 12:38 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
20 comments:
MJ,
the thing that bothers me the most is the negative effect this will have on churches, not associated with this guy. i'm not exactly a good christian, but i certainly live by the values i was taught in a christian home. more so than bush, i believe the respected preachers, like Mr. Billy Graham should counter Robertson's remarks. in fact, i think this is border hate speech, which is not protected by the first amendment. the FCC should, at the least, fine him. but i don't know if they can since his show may be considered a church.
Maybe is he still on that bike ride with Lance and hasn’t even heard about it yet. That must be it.
Also in reference to
“If Robertson is allowed to discredit himself as well as the president with his outrageous and untruthful remarks, then anyone opposing this war or any form of dissent should also be allowed without question or any larger burden of proof that the Bush base is allowed to operate with”.
This I agree with; I mean this, after Intelligent design, is just too much to take.
Addressing Smink:
I'm not all that worried about the negative effect this will have on other churches not associated with him as I believe most people know he is far far out there, Bush not countering this will cause more damage I believe.
I do believe people like Robertson are very hateful, ugly and insane people so I hate to say this but I do feel what he said is fully protected and should be.
I didn't really see it as a hate speech more like a crazy plan from a crazy mind.
Maybe not I don't know.
Smink, I gotta agree with ya. I too grew up in the southern Bible belt, and not once did I ever hear a preacher give a sermon about politics or encourage the murder of someone, especially the leader of a foreign country. Robertson has crossed a line. I agree that it is hate speech, and he should be fined by the FCC. After all, his speech, which was broadcasted on cable as well as non-cable stations including family channels, did intice violence, such is entirely regulated by the FCC.
Thanks Alice. It does appear that I would have to disagree with you and side with Smink about the realms of protected speech. Robertson is inticing violence, albeit to children and families that take everything he says as the gospel itself. If anyone has a following, it is Robertson, and the following is both political and religious. He should be fined and warned and his not-for-profit organization should be investigated as well. Actually I believe he has been investigated already by the IRS, but I'm not clear about all that. But I do agree that if Bush is going to allow this kind of talk to go without notice, then he should do the same for everyone including those who disagree with him.
Thanks to both for reading.
I agree that Bush is making a foolish error here and have to disagree with the little girl Alice on this one as well. I too believe that there should be some kind of sanction against Pat Robertson. I am a non practicing Christian and I spend a fair amount of time in the south, enough to know this rabid ness is not the norm.
why does the bush administration need to denounce pat robertson? he's just an invidual citizen.
Josh thanks for reading. Robertson is by far way more than an individual citizen. He's a public figure. He's run for president twice, has his own talk show and is on the public's airwaves-- from which he makes millions. He also speaks at the GOP national convention(s).
I would argue that Robertson is anything but ordinary or average, or individual like you say. Needless to say that his pulpit preaches hate and violence. Uuuummm, those are just a few of the reasons that I can think of why Bush should denounce such.
Oh man, as soon as I saw that report on CNN I was just aghast. I mean, this is the same kind of sh*t some extremist mullahs preach, and then you have the rest of the Muslim community trying to assure the rest of the world that Islam is a peaceful religion. Since we have the right to express our opinions in America, it's hard to really go after this...I mean, I have no idea about the whole laws where this is concerned...but I know for example, that let's say, there is some religious leader preaching that abortion doctors need to be stopped...and then one of the leader's followers goes out and kills a doctor...to what extent is the religious leader liable? And is it possible to charge them for incidiary language already beforehand. I think Pat Robertson would do more damage if he preached that kind of stuff, because a few people might pick up arms and go shoot some doctors. The likelihood of one of his followers actually being able to kill Chavez is zilch.
However, this was a huge slap on the head moment for me. I mean, it's just embarassing to America, and doesn't paint us in a good light when it comes to religious extremism, if we can't keep the extremists in our own communities under control. So some kind of punitive action needs to be taken against Robertson.
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/fullnewsbottom/tm_objectid=15880889&method=full&siteid=106694-name_page.html%22
thought I'd pass that along...Blair is set to join Carlyle Group once his leadership role is through.
excuse me sir, I speak Robertsonese;
The Bible says thou shalt not committ murder. In the the bible, here God is talking about the murder of people. Robertson doesn't considenr non-christians people not are any commies real human beings, thus assassination is perfectly OK and is what GOD wants us to do.
...what, why are you looking at me like that?
: )
I've reconsidered my position and although I still hesitate, due to my fondness for the first amendment.
I guess if they can bug the living crap out of Howard Stern they should do the same to Robertson. Maybe my often wrong preconceived notions about the south, and southerners in general and Christian Fundamentalist in specific clouded my judgment in this case.
I think markkind hit the nail on the head - there is a certain mentality among the more extreme fundamentalist faux Christians that simply do not see human beings with a different belief system (or country of residence, gender, age, etc...) as being human - therefore the "thou shalt not kill" concept seems to not occur to them. There are some horrific pics of the war posted on salon.com - one is of an infant killed by American fire. I wonder if Robertson would decry the taking of THAT infant's life?
Just so everyone knows, the deleted comments are not me editing peoples comments. They were spam. So I removed them.
I signed up for blogexplosion the other day and I didn't realize I was signing up for unfettered spam. It seems to have slowed down some, but it is very annoying. I'm going to have to figure out a way to avoid it.
businessman, I'm not sure alice is a little girl, but I do agree with you and your conclusions concerning the preacher man :)
CVG, good to see ya back. I see we are agreeing on some things. How odd. Just kidding. I agree, the FCC should fine him.
Jessica, thanks for the link. I'll check it out now. Welcome here any time.
Mark, that's good stuff. I see your point. I just don't think Jesus would agree with it. Robertson is a wacko, and if he's led by God, then I would hate to see someone who isn't.
Alice, aaahhh it's no fun when everyone agrees all the time :) What the south has a stereotype?? No way.
Frst, you need to come around more often. It's people like you that always bring me back down to earth.
Thanks to all for reading and commenting.
Oh my god...I got so insanely spammed the other day...I got 19 comments on this one post...only 5 of which weren't spam. Very annoying.
Mr. Robertson is an embarrassment who did the anti-terrorism cause nothing but harm when he called for the assination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Al Qaeda and other anti-Americans will incorporate his remarks on Venezuela to portray us as an imperalistically-driven superpower. We, they will sell to their potential followers, invade country based upon some baseless and unfounded accusations to get rid of a nuisance (say, Saddam Hussein?).
That said I wholeheartedly oppose content-based FCC fines. Mr. Robertson was at that point speaking his mind and while exercised in an irresponsible way, he is entitled to do that as an American citizen. Nor can we accuse him of inciting violence - at least not by American citizens in general.
Most Americans won't find themselves in the position that would allow them to kill the Venezuelan president and most wouldn't recognize his face anyway. In his defense, he could say that he only called on the Special Forces to kill Mr. Chavez.
I'm sorry MJ. I really hate Pat Robertson, what he stands for, his intemperate remarks. There is little that I can say in his defense. His latest remarks were stupid and irresponsible and I would much rather condemn him for his remarks but in calling for FCC fines you made this an issue about governmental censorship and while this may appall you, I'll defenda a Hitler before the FCC anyday.
Nah, I'm not appalled Heretic. I understand your statement. But I do disagree with it. If the FCC can fine the NFL for a boob or a backside and can fine Howard Stern for using foul language then I see no difference in fining Robertson for stupid, hate-filled speech. Robertson is a public figure and should be held to a hire standard.
Even without a fine from the FCC, I still contend that Bush should distance himself from Robertson.
If Robertson had called for the murder of the head of the NAACP, then I would bet federal action would be taken against him. Granted that is not what he did, but calling for the murder of a hispanic president isn't all that different for most hispanics.
I don't always agree with FCC either, but we should either use it or get rid of it. Bush will not get rid of the FCC because he uses it to enforce his self-imposed moral authority upon the country. Whatever Bush deems to be appropiate is the name of the game. I fully believe this falls in the realm of FCC regulation.
Thanks for reading, but it looks like we disagree-- finally :)
The FCC probably would take action if Mr. Robertson called for the murder of the NAACP. There would be a huge outcry from within the African American and Caribbean-American communities because Mr. Robertson would essentially be calling for the murder of someone who claims to represent their interests. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez "represents" Venezuelans and not Americans.
Is that right? No of course not. Free speech claims should not be dependent upon the popular will of those who are exposed to it. The Constitution imposes upon us an obligation as well as a promise. In return for protections against those who deny us the right to speak freely, we must allow others that same protection.
Your analogy doesn't persuade me (though I reiterate my belief that both , Mr. Robertson's call for the assination of Mr. Chavez and any call to assisnate an NAACP leader are both protected). The potential harm implicated in the former is far less substantial than the one implicated in the latter. Mr. Robertson's base includes English-speaking Christian Americans who, as I noted in a prior entry, probably would not recognize Mr. Chavez if they saw him on TV. They live in the United States, don't have access to guns that will reach Caracas, and cannot demonstrate their displeasure by shooting a Chavez loyalist.
If he were to advocate for the murder of an NAACP member, his base of supporters would at the very least have the theoretical chance to kill the local NAACP member in his place. Incitment depends upon immediacy. He cannot incite violence by appealing to a group of people who lack the ability to follow his orders.
Mr. Robertson has another distinguishing characteristic in his favor - he specically suggested that Special Forces handle this. No one can realistically say he was ordering his loyal follwoers to do this.
Almost forgot.
I would wholeheartedly endorse a proposal to rid us of the FCC's ability to censor speech, whether it be thought-provocative, "mainstream", and respectful in tone or politically incorrect sexually graphic, intellectually deficient, morally dubious, hateful, or unpopular.
Nonetheless, political speech at the pulpit is not a right guaranteed whatsoever. And the 700 Club is his pulpit. Having merely only called for the lone assassination of a foreign leader would have never equaled Hitler's fury even on a mild day.
Robertson has both a political following and a religious one. To think that some zealot would not heed his words to be that of God's is not at all far-fetched. And if God is calling for the murder of anyone, whether it's a foreign leader with an unrecognizable face or not does not matter when those believe God's will to be involved. They will find a way.
To think, though, had Hitler been stopped at his pulpit.
Post a Comment