Newscoma

When evangelical leader Pat Robertson made the prediction yesterday that the United States would suffer “mass killings” in 2007, I was swept up with two very distinctive thoughts:

First of all,  In the last 11 years, the Federal Building was bombed by American Timothy McVeigh and then we all know about 9/11 so citing this is like saying that there is the possibility we might have three inches of snow here in northwest Tennessee in 2007. It might happen. It might not. The possibility of terrorism of attacks on U.S. soil does exist. Hell, we have terror alerts, Mr. Robertson.  It’s a given it might happen. No news here.

But wait a minute, CNN and Fox did make it news. Why does mainstream media keep feeding Pat Robertson’s ego by making him headline news? Robertson says that God told him this information, then CNN goes on to list the predictions that he has hit or missed over the years.  He said Bush would win re-election in 2004 (he had a fifty percent chance of getting that one right) and then last year he said a tsunami would hit the U.S. (it did not) but he said he was partly right because of the storms in New England.

All righty then.

Robertson’ has talked a great deal over the years. Boy does this man like to rattle. Let’s take a gander at some of the things from Wikipedia he has said over the years, shall we. I’ve cut and pasted here so we have links galore:

1.  In 1991, he had this lovely sentiment about other Christian denominations: “Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.”
2. In 1998, he said that acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and “possibly a meteor.”
3. The whole Hugo Chavez thing.
4. And, at 76-years-old, he said he could leg press 2000 lbs. (There are many more but I just don’t have the willpower to go on.) Well, that made the news although I have no idea why and I’m not sure there was any proof on that one.

Robertson likes to be in the news.  And mainstream media allows him his rants by putting it on the top fold many times. But if you look at statements like this, it has that Weekly World News (of that I love so dearly) quality about it all.  Except there is a place for news and then there is a place for Bigfoot sightings and yearly predictions. Robertson’s stuff is no different than the interview with Mother Time from this week’s edition for WWN.

But yet again I’m seeing another example of fear-mongering from the TV preacher, and MMN giving him relevance. Once again.

Just saying.