Robertson like a cross between Robert Anton Wilson and Henry Ford on acid

[StefanX]

Billmon rips Pat Robertson... He's really hilarious!

Bring me the head of Hugo Chavez

Personally, I've known Pat was either a demented psychopath or a world-class con artist ever since he first emerged on the national scene back in the early 1980s. I remember seeing some old footage of Robertson hopping down the aisle of his "church" on one foot in some kind of a faith-healing trace, and thinking to myself: Nobody does something like that unless they're authentically ripped on the Holy Spirit, or they expect to make some nice coin out of it.

I always assumed it was the latter (a business associate who traveled with Robertson claims he never saw him reading the Bible -- just Investor's Business Daily and the Wall Street Journal.) But then I happened to catch Robertson on the tube giving a speech during the 1988 Republican convention, and I realized he was both a con man and a nut case -- with no clear dividing line between them.

Robertson's speech was devoted not to the evils of the San Francisco Democrats or the disaster that would befall America if Mike Dukakis ever set foot in the White House -- the usual stuff -- but to a full-throated attack on the French Revolution, the Bavarian Illuminati and the international banker's cartel. He sounded like a cross between Robert Anton Wilson and Henry Ford on acid. I haven't heard so many freaking conspiracy theories in one place since my one and only conversation with Larry Flynt, back when he was still hooked on the hard stuff. (I'll tell that story some other time.)

The delegates, of course, didn't have a clue what Pat was raving on about. But every time he sensed he was losing his audience, every time the applause became too perfunctory, Robertson would suddenly veer from his insane rant and insert some red-meat attack line about the Godless liberals and their assault on the family, or whatever. And the morons would eat it up. Then, having regained their attention, he'd go back to his conspiracy theories. And I remember thinking: This man may be crazy, but he also knows exactly what he's doing.

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