My dear friend Paul McCain over at Cyberbrethren is calling out all Evangelicals to rise up in protest over Pat Robertson’s latest pearl of wisdom regarding the Dover, Pennsylvania school board elections. Seems that Robertson suggested that, since Dover voted Intelligent Design supporters off their school board, the town need not bother to call upon the Lord in their coming day of trouble. Perhaps they should consult Charles Darwin instead, Robertson evangelically suggested.
I’m surprised, given Brother McCain’s acerbic wit, that he didn’t get Robertson's joke. Robertson wasn’t being serious; he was being sarcastic. He was saying that if Dover didn’t like the idea of God intelligently designing the heavens and the earth, well maybe they shouldn’t bother Him when things in this intelligently designed universe don’t go their way. It’s a bit like St. Paul saying, ‘Hey, if they’re so enamored of circumcision, why not go for neutering?” (Galatians 5:12).
Pat Robertson’s problem isn’t bad theology; he’s just a bit sarcastically challenged. He’s trying to be funny, but no one seems to be laughing. What do you expect from a good ol’ boy from the South? Sarcasm is as foreign to the southern tongue as Swahili. You need to come from true citadels of cynicism like New York or Boston or Chicago to speak sarcastically. Believe me. I come from Chicago, where sarcasm is considered a verbal art form. How else could you survive the Cubs? The closest thing to sarcasm they have in the South is NASCAR, and they think that’s a sport.
Pat Robertson has had similar failed attempts at sarcasm in the past. Remember Robertson’s call to have a hit taken out on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez? Everyone took it so seriously. Sheesh. Get a life. That was a sarcastic dig at Bush’s failed foreign policy! Or remember the time Robertson predicted a hurricane over Disneyworld on account of Gay Day? Get a clue! He was poking fun at the simplistic tit-for-tat moralism of fundamentalists!
Now, I know some of you are still skeptical, especially if you’re prone to take everything you see on TV seriously. So let me give you a couple of examples that clearly were intended as sarcastic culture criticism by Pat Robertson. Remember that failed run for the presidency against George H.W. Bush in 1988? Holy smoke, that was funnier than Pat Paulson running against Richard Nixon. What a hoot! Robertson wasn’t seriously running for president; he was engaging in political satire over Evangelicals getting involved in politics. And what a statement he made, too! Trouble was, everyone took him seriously.
Still not convinced? Let me give you the most obvious example of them all. Something nobody in their right minds would ever take seriously. Such an outrageous attempt at religious satire that it leaves you doubled over in fits of laughter. The Saturday Night Live of religion. I’m talking about the 700 Club, easily the funniest, wittiest, most cynically sarcastic dig at religious broadcasting there ever has been.
Come to think of it, Pat Robertson may actually be a piece of satirical performance art himself - a parody of a teleevangelist who will say anything to grab a headline.
Wait a minute. I just thought of something. If that’s the case, we may have seriously underestimated Pat Robertson all along. He may not be the bumbling goofball some people think he is. He could be a genius.
Posted On: November 19th, 2005 at 1:45pm by revcwirla
He already thinks that. You're probably right, though. But every once in a while, shootin' fish in a barrel is fun.
I figure God keeps old Pat around for comic relief.
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