Now Pat Robertson is no stranger to saying really offensive and insensitive things. If the Guinness people had a recognized world record for the number of genuinely stupid and prejudiced things one person could speak into a camera or make in a written statement, then the host of the 700 Club would be a hard man to beat.
After all, this is the man who credited the Haitian Earthquake to a pact with Satan.
He’s the man who said that he wanted to nuke State Department headquarters.
He’s the man who threatened Disney World’s annual “Gay Days” with divine retribution.
He’s the man who claimed that Scotland was a “dark land” overrun by homosexuals.
He’s the man who described feminism as “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
And finally, this is the man who “totally concurred” when Jerry Falwell blamed the attacks of September 11th on “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America.”
So, what has he done this time? Well, watch for yourself. After one of his Christian Broadcasting Network correspondents interviewed former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice about her favorite Thanksgiving dish, Robertson asks the interviewer if Mac and Cheese was “a black thing”
Even more uncomfortable than the question is the way that the interviewer just rolls with it. And it hit me… Unlike the examples above when Robertson is being deliberately provocative, this is something new. And that interviewer’s reaction and complete lack of surprise made me realize something.
Pat Robertson has become the Religious Right’s embarrassing racist grandpa. You know what I mean. The older member of the family who creates awkward silences at family gatherings with astoundingly prejudiced remarks about “the Orientals?” The relative who the family doesn’t correct because they’re really, really old and “doesn’t know any better?”
That guy. That’s Pat Robertson in 2011.
Just smile and nod, interviewer. Smile and nod. After all, he’ll be dead soon.
