Pat Robertson's Slippery Slope....

[Bluray2]

[bigvalboy]

He's getting worse. He went from serving pizza at a gay wedding, to a Muslim, finding a wife, fornicating, and divorcing her all in the span of 1:30.

[Tonyko]

I'm sorry didn't this guy DIE like 7 years ago???? (I really think he did, and they just replaced him with a left-over Muppit of those two old guys in the balcony) I hope so because that means he's got a man's arm up his ass.

[loverboy95]

I don't understand how this show can still be on with this idiot on it.

[bigvalboy]

His other job is very lucrative...

 

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110325180958/muppet/images/thumb/3/3d/TMS-Statler%26Waldorf-BalconyBox.jpg/1000px-TMS-Statler%26Waldorf-BalconyBox.jpg

[rvwnsd]

I'm having a hard time understanding whether he is for or against the religious freedom law. Based on his statements, it would seem practicing beastiality, polygamy, polyamorousness, and marriage/sex/divorce could all be justified by claiming it is part of one's religion to do so. However, he also stated the gays will make Christians do all sorts of things, which makes me wonder if he is for the law.

 

God, it is so much easier to be a heathen.

[Tonyko]

I don't understand how this show can still be on with this idiot on it.

 

They OWN their own network TBN, that's the ONLY way they stay on the air, they own their own satellites too, ALL paid for by ppl sending money to Jeesusah. (some of the shows they produced just killed LOL me one was a teen drama ala Dawson's C, these HS students (but they were all like FORTY years old in Varsity jackets) would stand around their lockers talking about how great it is NOT to have sex) There was another with a blonde lady preacher I SWORE wore TWO wigs at once. Trust me BETTER than SNL.

[Guest ChrisW]

A couple things...

 

First I think the dementia has set in

 

Second and most important, if I could could force straight people to have sex my trips to the gym would be a whole lot more fun and I would go twice a day

[Tonyko]

This schmuck blamed a Fla hurricane on the Rainbow flags that were flying and even 9/11 on us somehow. BUT we DO truly owe him thanks for ONE thing. HE and Fallwell sitting on that GOP convention stage may have cost Bush #1 the re-election, they said feminism turns women into dykes and armies of moderate Rep's marched their stilettos to the other side. We possibly have him to thank for Mr. Clinton, a Pres who mentioned AIDS in his ELECTION NIGHT speech after Reagan barely uttering the word in 8 years and it Bush always sounding like it was some afterthought when he said it like someone was yelling in his earpice MENTION AIDS BEFORE YOU GET OFF!

[+ deej]

This schmuck blamed a Fla hurricane on the Rainbow flags that were flying and even 9/11 on us somehow. BUT we DO truly owe him thanks for ONE thing. HE and Fallwell sitting on that GOP convention stage may have cost Bush #1 the re-election, they said feminism turns women into dykes and armies of moderate Rep's marched their stilettos to the other side. We possibly have him to thank for Mr. Clinton, a Pres who mentioned AIDS in his ELECTION NIGHT speech after Reagan barely uttering the word in 8 years and it Bush always sounding like it was some afterthought when he said it like someone was yelling in his earpice MENTION AIDS BEFORE YOU GET OFF!

 

Simmer down. We have absolutely nothing to thank him for. Nor do his followers, ironically.

 

He is the emperor with no clothes. He is the boy who made a career out of crying wolf.

 

Vilifying him may feel good but it only grants him legitimacy that he does not deserve.

[Gar1eth]

Remember the rings we used to wear to infect straight people with HIV? Oh wait, neither do I.

 

Gman

[rvwnsd]

A couple things...

 

First I think the dementia has set in...

 

My thoughts exactly.

[Tonyko]

Simmer down. We have absolutely nothing to thank him for. Nor do his followers, ironically.

 

He is the emperor with no clothes. He is the boy who made a career out of crying wolf.

 

Vilifying him may feel good but it only grants him legitimacy that he does not deserve.

 

I respectfully disagree :-) The public forum he and those like him are afforded and the equally public villification of them does not add to their legitimacy, it adds to the big clown noses more and more religous moderates may perceive them to be wearing when their statements like this are given light, and perhaps adds to the number of those who may even change their way of thinking when they realize "that" is not "them". *it's exactly what I suggested HAPPENED in '92. And sorry, we got Mr. Clinton and I still feel (he said with a grin) that we have him and his legitimacy in part to thank for it :-)

[AdamSmith]

The marvelous TV Tropes wiki has a delightful entry on The 700 Club.

 

The 700 Club is a long-running Christian TV show hosted by Pat Robertson, produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network and airing on local syndicates and religious cable stations, as well as ABC Family. Initially a run-of-the-mill show focusing on Christian testimonials and gospel performances, The 700 Club gradually evolved into a daily platform for Robertson's ultraconservative political commentary. The show also has news reports from CBN News, mainly of topics of Christian interest.Because of the religious and political elements endemic to this topic, and controversies related to Pat Robertson that are too numerous to count, the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement is in effect for this page.

 

This show provides examples of:

• The Artifact/Network Red Headed Stepchild: For ABC Family, which Pat Robertson used to own. ABC Family, for their part, goes to great lengths to distance itself from the show, putting up disclaimers both before and after the broadcast, burying it in a late-night time slot, and even removing its name from on-screen cable listings whenever it is on.
  
  • ABC Family don't even attach any network branding to the broadcast during The 700 Club.
    
  • Monday nights, its lead-in at the 10PM time slot is a rerun of The Fosters that had just finished airing at the 9PM slot.
    

  [*]Artifact Title: The show's title comes from Robertson's original seven-hundred donors.

  • The name of the Christian Broadcasting Network counts as one. At one point, CBN really was a (small) broadcast network, with affiliates in a few East Coast cities and a cable station. Eventually, however, CBN sold off everything and the cable station became ABC Family, although Robertson managed to work in a contractual headlock forcing it to (reluctantly) air his programming. The Christian Broadcasting Network as it exists today is really a production company for The 700 Club and related shows.
    

  [*]Ban on Politics: Ironically was an initial rule of the show during The Sixties and the first half of The Seventies, until a combination of liberal social trends and Watergate convinced Pat Robertson to start commenting on politics.

  [*]Berserk Button: Pat's most common ones are homosexuality, Islam, and negative reaction whenever Christians criticize either; some of his more infamous Open Mouth, Insert Foot incidents were sparked by one or more of these topics.

  [*]Catch Phrase:

  • "Amen and amen."
    
  • "Ladies and gentlemen..."
    
  • "We leave you today with... [bible quotation]."
    

  [*]Cold Reading: Pat's healing segments, basically. His descriptions of illnesses being healed are intentionally vague and generalized, and he never heals a member of a studio audience or mentions the healee by name. That way, anyone watching at home can assume they've been healed, while Pat avoids the kind of scrutiny dealt to other TV faith healers.

  [*]Conspiracy Theorist: Pat's 1991 book, The New World Order, recycled plenty of conspiracy tropes and borrowed heavily from books by crackpot anti-Semites, which got Pat in trouble with the Jewish community.

  • The 700 Club's reporters sometimes push conspiracy theories as "news" stories, like the claim that leftists are working with Muslim radicals to overthrow the West or that abortionists are targeting African-American babies for genocide.
    

  [*]Enemy Mine: Over the show's history, Pat has defended several African dictators with at best questionable human rights records on the grounds that they were moral Christian leaders fighting an encroaching Islamist menace. Perhaps his most infamous relationship was with Liberia's overthrown president (and alleged warlord and cannibal) Charles Taylor.

  [*]God Is Good: The intended message of the show, although Pat's notoriety may have undercut it.

  [*]Godwin's Law: Broken by Pat when assailing supposed persecution of evangelicals.

  [*]Guest Host: Wendy Griffith on "Skinny Wednesday."

  • Previously, that day was co-hosted by Kristi Watts until her exit in 2013 - who ended up often on the receiving end of Robertson's zingers on health-related stories.
    

  [*]Healing Hands: Pat and his co-host raise up their hands during the "remote faith healing" segments.

  [*]Heel-Faith Turn: The formula of the testimonial segments, especially if they involve "ex-gays", former atheists, or people who practiced a different religion.

  [*]Israel: Because the country is important to their End Time eschatology, The 700 Club often airs news stories and interviews that heap praise on Israel's government, military, upstart businesses, and tourist destinations. They also air flagrantly one-sided coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, defending Israeli actions even when the Israelis were clearly in the wrong.

  [*]Karma Houdini: With all of his Open Mouth, Insert Foot statements, it's mind-boggling that Pat hasn't said something so offensive that he was forced to cancel the show or resign as host. Yet.

  [*]Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Erick Stakelbeck, The 700 Club's "terrorism expert" whose commentary often veers into tirades against Muslim immigrants, is not an actual expert on Islamic extremism or practices. His only experience prior to CBN was sports writing.

  [*]Laugh Track: Obvious canned applause is heard whenever Pat sits down with a studio guest.

  • Especially obvious considering the 700 Club hasn't had a (visible) Studio Audience since the late 1990s.
    

  [*]Long Runner: Since 1966.

  [*]Loophole Abuse: Why The 700 Club is still on ABC Family. When ABC bought the Fox Family Channel in 2001, they apparently had a legal staff that rubber-stamped the deal and didn't look at the contract closely. Robertson threw all kinds of legalese into the contract which meant he irrevocably kept three hours of airtime a day, and that the moment the word "Family" was stripped from the name, every single deal made with every single cable system was null and void, and Disney would be stuck having to renegotiate with every system to get back on.

[AdamSmith]

Cont.:

• Moral Guardians
  
• Moral Substitute: CBN, especially its news service, is presented as one for the "liberal" broadcast media. Whether it's a Moral Substitute or a Propaganda Machine depends on your point of view.
  
  • The American Center for Law & Justice, which is frequently given exposure on The 700 Club, is Pat's substitute for the American Civil Liberties Union — almost down to the acronyms.
    

  [*]Only Known by Their Nickname: "Pat" is his childhood nickname. His real name is Marion.

  [*]Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Just too many examples to count.

  [*]Patriotic Fervor: Blended with revisionist history claiming that America is a nation uniquely favored by God and was meant to function as a Christian theocracy.

  [*]Playing the Victim Card: Depending on your religious outlook. Pat claims that laws and court rulings protecting gays from discrimination amount to hate crimes against Christians.

  [*]Political Correctness Gone Mad

  [*]Religion of Evil: How the CBN people regard every religion except Christianity. No, literally — The 700 Club advertised a CBN pamphet in The Nineties which outright declared that any religion that did not accept Jesus Christ as savior counted as a "cult."

  • Since The War on Terror, The 700 Club has been very keen to portray Islam as the Religion of Evil in its news and op-ed segments. In recent years, Pat and his CBN News "reporters" have been dropping hints that Muslims will be the direct opponents of Christians during Armageddon.
    

  [*]Self Promotion Disguised As News: Whenever a natural disaster happens somewhere, CBN News always focuses on the relief efforts by a particular charity called Operation Blessing. If there is some sort of right-wing outrage going on, they will talk to an "expert" affiliated with the Christian Coalition, the American Center for Law & Justice, or Regent University. There's a reason for this — all of these groups are founded or run by Pat Robertson.

  [*]Signs of the End Times: A frequent topic, reflecting Pat's Christian Zionist beliefs.

  [*]Spoofed with Their Own Words: There is no shortage of offensive or bizarre things Pat has said during his decades-long career, which has led him to becoming a punchline in recent years.

  [*]Talk Show: About two thirds of the show, after the news segment.

  [*]Telethon: Annual ones in January, broadcast on ABC Family as expanded editions of The 700 Club.

  [*]10-Minute Retirement: Pat briefly left the show for several months when he decided to run for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. He returned after withdrawing from the primaries.

  [*]Un-Person: Danuta Soderman, one of Pat's co-hosts in The Eighties, was fired when she published an autobiography describing a five-year extramarital affair. Afterwards, Soderman criticized Pat's politics and dished about her experiences at CBN (her feminism clashed with the all-male management) in a series of interviews and essayshttp://static.mediatropes.info/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif. CBN has erased Soderman's five-year contribution to the show.

  • Pat's son Tim, who took over hosting duties when his father ran for president in 1988. Tim Robertson was a dull TV personality and his lack of appeal led to a sag in viewer contributions, prompting Pat's return after leaving the campaign trail. The 700 Club also skips over his hosting tenure.note
    
  • Jim Bakker, of PTL infamy, was Pat's original co-host when The 700 Club launched in 1966, and was also a puppeteer on a CBN kids' show with his wife Tammy Faye. A poor working relationship with Pat eventually led the Bakkers to leave CBN and join Paul Crouch's TBN, with the same results.
    

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/The700Club

[bostonman]

If there is some sort of right-wing outrage going on, they will talk to an "expert" affiliated with the Christian Coalition, the American Center for Law & Justice, or Regent University. There's a reason for this — all of these groups are founded or run by Pat Robertson

 

The original name of Regent University was, of all things, CBN University. I remember the original CBN station on my cable system, when it used to be liberal doses of the 700 Club alternating with syndicated old black-and-white sitcoms. I specifically remember The Rifleman as being one of them. I always thought it was fascinating to have a dose of so-called religious programming followed by the iconic (and IMO obnoxious) Rifleman opening where Connors gives us a round of rifle shots. But then again, I guess it fit in very well with right-wing ideals.

[Tonyko]

I hear you. You have NO idea what it was like for me growing up in NYC and NEVER seeing anything like these people THEN early cable suddenly brings this Atlanta TV station into your apartment (1980 -83 in there) and THERE are these Charasmatic Christian ministry shows. OMG Tammy Faye Baker etc, HAND TO GOD I thought it was some real estate show they were always outside with blueprints of buildings etc then one day I'm flipping thru and she's SINGING, and I'm like WHY is this real estate lady singing??? It was right when the Charlotte Observer I think began questioning their bookkeeping and her mink coats and Jim's boat etc and she was crying with her mascara running, omg I became additced lol. Right till the end :-)

[Gar1eth]

I hear you. You have NO idea what it was like for me growing up in NYC and NEVER seeing anything like these people THEN early cable suddenly brings this Atlanta TV station into your apartment (1980 -83 in there) and THERE are these Charasmatic Christian ministry shows. OMG Tammy Faye Baker etc, HAND TO GOD I thought it was some real estate show they were always outside with blueprints of buildings etc then one day I'm flipping thru and she's SINGING, and I'm like WHY is this real estate lady singing??? It was right when the Charlotte Observer I think began questioning their bookkeeping and her mink coats and Jim's boat etc and she was crying with her mascara running, omg I became additced lol. Right till the end

 

 

Just so you know we weren't /aren't all like that-I lived in Bible Belt Texas-and I never saw anyone exactly like that either. I had a Southern Baptist Friend- this was in high school-he used to make fun of Tammy Faye all the time. I would turn it on briefly only for a laugh. I couldn't take too much of it.

 

Gman