Some Will Be Diners and Some Will Be Dinner...

Thoughts on Pat Robertson, George Clooney and the Oh So Christian Logic of All the Better to Eat You My Dear

Revolution #008, July 17, 2005, posted at revcom.us

Revolution newspaper received this correspondence from a reader:

What do thoughtful artists like Susan Sarandon, Mos Def, Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas, Alfre Woodard, George Clooney, and Penélope Cruz have in common with that certifiably insane fascist theocrat and Bushite henchman Pat Robertson?

The correct answer should be NOTHING!

But the latest insanity of “finding common ground” with Christian fascists has now put people who have brought us memorable characters in thought provoking films like Frida, Thelma and Louise, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Crazy in Alabama, and Amistad—side by side with the likes of Pat Robertson online at www.one.org for all the world to see.

And I just want to say to all those artists who are respected among the masses for speaking out against the Bush regime—including people who signed the NOT IN OUR NAME Statement of Conscience that set new standards for resistance amidst all the confusion after 9/11—THIS MADNESS HAS TO STOP!

However you got hooked into this deadly logic, you need to get unhooked right now. While you are busy trying to find common ground with people like Pat Robertson, he and his fellow theocrats are busy planning for the day when they can tear your face off (to borrow a phrase from columnist Maureen Dowd describing how the Republicans treated the Democrats at the RNC).

While you are sitting down to lunch, Pat is planning for the day when you are lunch!

*****

Wednesday, July 6, 2005. Breakfast, coffee, and the New York Times. On the op-ed page I discovered a column, “A Pat on the Head” by Sarah Vowell, who is temporarily replacing Maureen Dowd. And Sarah was singing the praises of Pat Robertson. She was beside herself with joy at seeing him with all these progressive artists. Too terrible...

Backtrack. I had been doing a slow burn for days about all the artists and millions of concertgoers around the world whose anger at global poverty has been sucked up into the political framework of Live 8—which imagines that the G-8—the biggest international gangsters and bloodsuckers on the planet—can be convinced to do something to help eliminate global poverty. And I had been thinking: Wow, we really need a culture of resistance and this Live 8 thang is not it!

That would have been bad enuf, but it got worse. The day before the Live 8 concerts in ten major cities worldwide, I checked out www.one.org—the U.S. affiliate of Live 8. After reading the mission statement which talks about continuing “the best American tradition of helping people help themselves”—I was convinced that the people behind this statement were either totally and willfully ignorant of all of U.S. history or they were deliberately pitching things to find “common ground” with people like Toby Keith, whose Super Bowl performance of a song upholding the great southern tradition of lynching went unnoticed while Janet Jackson’s breast (which is rather beautiful) sent the U.S. press into a frenzy of moral outrage.

And sure enuf, when I clicked on the one.org video spot, which featured a host of liberal and progressive artists in an appeal to stop world poverty, I found that creepy Christian Fascist Pat Robertson was among them.

So when Sarah Vowell did us all the favor of raising this madness to an actual theory of how to get eaten alive by Christian fascists in her New York Times op-ed piece, I had to say, thanks for the big fat target!

Although Sarah does admit that she used to think Robertson’s fundamentalist Christian ideology was a real problem, she writes that when she saw him on the one.org video she was “delighted to see him.”

One of the things that Sarah cites as evidence that Pat Robertson is “sane” is a conversation with George Clooney on Nightline where Clooney asked Robertson if his organization “Operation Blessing” would advocate the responsible use of condoms in Africa. And Robertson’s response: “Absolutely.I just don’t think we can close our eyes to human nature.you have to do that given the magnitude of the problem” sent Sarah into such a spin that she “could have hugged him.”

Sorry Sarah. Wrong again. Actually the “ABC” program—which stands for abstinence, be faithful, and use condoms as a last resort—is the Christian fundamentalist program to deal with AIDS in Africa. Not surprisingly the abstinence part has been pushed by the churches for unmarried women, while everyone knows that “boys will be boys.” In other words, male sexuality is “human nature,” while according to tradition’s chains, women should not have sex before marriage. And especially soldiers and armies—which are very important for the imperialist-sponsored plans in Africa— definitely will be “boys.” And guess whose regime backs and arms the neo-colonial armies in Africa? Okay, it begins with a “G”.and it is not George Clooney.

I could go on for pages about this desire to hug Pat Robertson—not to mention that it is disgusting to even visualize such a thing. But the basic point is that Robertson’s comments about condoms are completely consistent with his whole fundamentalist bible-based viewpoint which sees women as the property of men.

And I have a few more questions for Sarah and all those who think that they have anything in common with people like Pat Robertson:

What do they have in common with a man who believes that Satan is responsible for most of the suffering in the world and that much, if not most, of the disease in the world is caused by sin;

• a man who believes that it is “possible that a demon prince is in charge of New York, Detroit, St. Louis, or any other city”;
• a man who opposes the science of evolution, who opposes sexual relations before marriage, who thinks “the husband is the head of the wife,” who opposes abortion, and who wants to impose a theocratic government in the U.S.;
• a man who wants to impose a criminal justice system based on the “biblical model of ancient Israel,” which according to the bible calls for death by stoning for homosexuality, practicing witchcraft and magic, worshipping idols and gods other than the god of Israel, adultery and fornication—which, for women, means any sex outside marriage—and rebelliousness, or even disrespect, on the part of children toward their parents.¹
• What do they have in common with a man who has made crude exploitative diamond-mining deals in Liberia and gold-mining deals in Zaire with Mobutu—the U.S. puppet who was involved with the CIA in the murder of Patrice Lumumba²;
• a man who said prayers for the butcher Ríos Montt—the Christian Fascist who was responsible for the death-squad murders of tens of thousands in Guatemala;
• a man whose ideology and program, without exaggeration, amounts to Nazi-ism dressed in religious robes and tailored to contemporary American society in the present world context.

The answer should be NOTHING.

The answer should be that thinking people in the arts who want to change the world—who want to make a difference, who want to use their public voice to help billions of people on this planet whose lives are literally torn apart by a totally outmoded global economic and political system—have nothing in common with Pat Robertson.

The answer should be that such artists are banding together to oppose all this Christian fascist morality and to open their eyes to what is really standing between the 6 billion people on this planet and a world we would all want to live in.

***

Readers may recall that George Clooney played the scientific member of the hilarious team of three escaped cons in the Coen brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou? In one scene, after an encounter with three mysterious “Sirens” at a local pond, one of Clooney’s sidekicks suddenly disappears, and the third guy—convinced that their friend has been turned into a toad—insists on taking the toad along for the journey. Later, when Clooney is challenged by his friends about why he thinks he should be the leader of the group, he quips, “I thought it should be the one who was capable of abstract thought.” So I can’t resist asking George: what the hell are you thinking? Dontcha know that all the time you are bending to be inclusive to people like Pat Robertson, he will gladly accept your dinner invitations while he goes full steam ahead to carry out his program to push the world in the direction of theocracy, uncritical thinking, genocide and slavery. And by the way George, he probably believes that on the day of rapture Jesus will turn you into a toad. I wonder if he likes frog’s legs.