Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Enough Pat for now
The Robertson brou-ha-ha has about run its course. Robertson's faithful aren't going to turn against him just because he called for the killing of a Muslim loving, Communist foreigner. Disney and ABC, who air his show, have no control over it; he has a contract that allows him to stay on the air and do whatever he wants as long as he wants.

Bush certainly isn't going to say anything critical about one of his most loyal supporters. If moderates or the press ask the administration for comment, they can point to Rumsfeld's non-comdenation (which amounted to "I'm not planning to kill Chavez; it's not my department") and say they've already dealt with it.

Robertson has already turned the story into one of him being persecuted by the liberal press:
Conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Wednesday that his remarks about the removal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were taken out of context and that he never called for the killing of the Latin American leader.

"I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should '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 [Associated Press], but that happens all the time," Robertson said on "The 700 Club" program.

This is cute. He says "'take him out' can be a number of things" but he avoids telling us which one he meant. He doesn't mention how they misinterpreted "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it...." I'd really like to hear what else "go ahead and do it" means in this context.

The story will probably fade off into the collections of wacky Robertson quotes that people like me keep. That's a shame. It would be nice if he were to be held accountable for once. Somebody really needs to take that dumb bastard out. And by "take out" I, of course, mean dinner and a movie with or without sex afterwards.

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