Year: 2010

This is an updated repost of an article originally published in 2006.

Pat Robertson’s decree on Jan. 6 that the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on Monday was a curse from God may be his most bizarre attribution of God’s vengeance yet:

As Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said “well over” 100,000 people may have died in the natural disaster, Robertson took to the airwaves Wednesday on his show and said that the country has been “cursed by one thing after another” since they “swore a pact to the devil.”

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about,” Robertson said Tuesday.

“They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another,” Robertson said.

Keep in mind that as Robertson said this, as far as anyone knew, tens of thousands of people were trapped and dying under collapsed buildings in Port au Prince.

It’s hard to say whether this utterance from Robertson tops his take in 2005 on Hurricane Katrina, which he attributed to God’s retribution for legalized abortion:

“I was reading, yesterday, a book that was very interesting about what God has to say in the Old Testament about those who shed innocent blood — But have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected in some way?”

A year later, Robertson predicted that God would punish Oregon and Washington state because their coastal enclaves were populated by liberals:

Robertson says God has told him that storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America’s coastline this year. The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network has told viewers of “The 700 Club” that the revelations came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January.

“If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms,” Robertson said May 8. He added specifics in Wednesday’s show. “There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest,” he said.

But Robertson’s record at foretelling the weather is as lousy as his record for prophesying heavenly damnation. In 1998, Robertson predicted all sorts of disasters would smite central Florida:

After Orlando … city officials voted in 1998 to fly rainbow flags from city lampposts during the annual Gay Days event at Disney World, Robertson issued the city a warning: “I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you. … [A] condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”

But it was Robertson whom God smote. A few months after he called down God’s wrath on Orlando, God hurled Hurricane Bonnie directly at Robertson’s compound on Virginia Beach:

Overnight, Bonnie drifted out into the Atlantic southeast of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina … Rough surf pounded the Atlantic coastline as far north as New England, while 12- to 15-foot swells were reported along the Virginia coast. Winds as high as 90 mph snapped ship mooring ropes and left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity on Friday in the Virginia Beach-Norfolk area.

God’s reason for punishing Robertson is unclear. Perhaps it was in retaliation for Robertson’s propensity for passing judgment on others despite the biblical edit, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” — or maybe it was Robertson’s practice of shaking down elderly women for donations to his “Operation Blessing” and then using their “widows’ mites” to fund transport operations for the lucrative diamond-mining operations he owned in Zaire.

Only God knows the truth.

On Jan. 11, FreedomWorks — the corporate-funded, Washington-based community organizers behind the astroturfing of the Tea Bagger movement — put up a petition demanding that Democrats allow the media to cover health-care reform negotiation.

On that same day, organizers of next month’s Tea Party convention announced that, except for a small group of hand-picked propagandists, the media will not be allowed to cover their meeting at a luxury hotel in Nashville:

Word from Nashville on Monday was that the First National Tea Party Convention next month will be closed to the press, other than for a limited number of “selected” journalists. No word on who or how many.

This from the people who brought us last summer’s media-saturated Town Hall meetings…

Convention spokesman Judson Phillips informs us that most of the sessions are closed “at the request” of the presenters. “Given the media interest, I don’t want the sessions disrupted and overrun with the media,” he said…

If the secrecy sounds a little, well, un-American, Phillips has this explanation: It’s not a political convention, but a “working convention.”

It appears that sometimes the right of the people to peaceably assemble is best conducted out of view.

It is par for the course that there is a media blackout of the keynote speech by Sarah Palin on Saturday night, Feb. 6. But this event is sounding less like a grass-rootsy political affair by the minute. In addition to succumbing to the right wing’s irresistible impulse for secrecy and jackboot control of the media, tickets for the event in its fancy venue are priced for the elite at nearly $600 per person. (As this is being written, the convention website says tickets for the full meeting are sold out, but tickets for the Palin speech Saturday night are still available at $349.)

What this shows is that the new Tea Bag Party (TBP) is quickly taking on the qualities of a typical political party: Money-grubbing, dysfunction, hypocrisy and elitism.