I really like Pat Robertson. Whenever something major happens, he can be counted upon to unfailingly say the wrong thing. For example, most religious people think that prayer can nudge god into overcoming the laws of nature but they also have the sense that to blame deadly natural disasters on insufficient prayer, while being a perfectly logical consequence of that belief, may sound callous and be ridiculed, and so they refrain from doing so.

But Pat Robertson has no such inhibitions. The founder of the 700 Club said that the deadly tornados that ripped through midsection of the country were due to the fact that people did not pray enough. He could not blame the sinful lifestyle since that area of the country is the much venerated ‘heartland’ where all virtues supposedly reside.

It is an interesting thing about religious leaders, how quickly they can go from people who are seen as a serious threat to public life to becoming buffoons. They seem to have an uncanny knack for finding ways to jump the shark. Those readers who are older will recall a time when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were considered political powerhouses whose words were taken seriously. Robertson even ran for the Republican nomination in 1988 and did pretty well, finishing second in the Iowa caucus, ahead of even George H. W. Bush, who went on to be elected president that year.

I think it was their claims that the events of 2001 and hurricane Katrina were due to god’s anger with homosexuality that started their decline into becoming figures of fun. Falwell had long faded into insignificance by the time he died in 2007 but Robertson is still around and still saying the stupidest things.

I wish that he got more publicity because the more he talks, the more ridiculous religion seems.