There Ain't no rest for the Wicked: Pride Robertson Edition 🏳‍🌈🏳‍⚧

Cover photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash.

Well. Life has been super hectic, and I thought for sure I’d squeeze in another newsletter edition, an official one by the end of May. Not that one where I shared some of my dad’s young man’s thoughts. However, life comes fast, as they say. We moved. And it all went down pretty dang fast. We’re still unpacking and will be for a while, likely, but we have a house that we love. 

And now, I’m sitting here, with some actual time to write, and thinking about Pat Robertson of all people. And during Pride Month. What the rainbow?

If you don’t know, let’s just get this out of the way...

He ded.

When I was a kid, The 700 Club was on one of the three channels we could get on our tv’s rabbit ears. It was the early 90s and we never had cable or satellite growing up. None of that fancy tv stuff. Three channels. That was it. 

CBS on channel 13, NBC on 7, and 24 or 25 which was a locally owned station that was run by a christian group. They showed old shows like Bonanza and Gunsmoke with bizarre commercial interruptions because they were all Christian public service announcements of a sort. And in the mornings, you could catch The 700 Club. 

It was a weird time for me, because I was about ten years old and was regularly annoyed by Gulf War interruptions. I can recall waiting to see if it would go away in a few minutes, and if not, I’d get up and turn the tv off. Didn’t have time for that nonsense. War. What a pain in the butt. I wasn’t there for that, but Michael Landon as Little Joe and some decisive wisdom from Miss Kitty who was a madame at the local saloon. 

Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty in Gunsmoke and Michael Landon as Little Joe in Bonanza.

At some point around this time, I started to watch The 700 Club a bit. I don’t recall much about it, except it being a lot of doom and gloom and victim blaming. Really shameless fearmongering. What I do remember specifically is being annoyed that Pat Robertson always said “amen” twice at the end of a prayer. He’d say, “Amen... and amen.” I remember being annoyed to hell over it and saying to a sibling, “Why does he do that? God isn’t deaf, he heard him the first time.” I suppose an obvious argument would be that it was pretense. If you develop a unique way to do something, such as ending a prayer, you will be remembered for it. Heck, I still remember how Pat Robertson ended his prayers. 

You may be asking why I was watching The 700 Club at ten years old. Much less at all. Legit question. As I recall, it was simply morbid curiousity. I was being raised in a fundamentalist church of Christ and watching it was a way to look or hear what other people were saying in other groups. I don’t recall how long I did, I do remember it not being long, and when I stopped it was simply because I was tired of the schtick. Even at ten years old, and engrossed in fundamentalism, I just couldn’t get into Pat Robertson. 

And thank goodness. 

And after all of the hateful things Pat Robertson has said about LGBTQ folks through the years, he died during Pride Month. Well. Ain’t that sometihng. It’s like a chef’s kiss. The perfect dessert after an amazing dinner. A cool water after the run. 

Don’t speak evil of the dead.

They say you aren’t supposed to speak evil of the dead. But what if a person’s life was dedicated to evil? Then, in theory, speaking truth about them would be speaking evil of them. Heck, I’ve been talking shit about Hitler my whole life and he died long before I was born. 

Hitler was a one nut asshole. 

See, I just can’t help it.

But seriously, I don’t care how many testicles Hitler had. Ridiculous and pointless to worry about that. 

Conclusion.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the facts about bad people are going to be horrible. That’s because that was the life they chose to live. It’s their legacy. So of course some people are going to speak evil of them after they pass, because they left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. And Robertson has a pretty awful legacy. 

Also, I’ll take advice from Miss Kitty over Pat Robertson any day.

Music.

This month the song is “Ain’t no rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant.