Pat Robertson and James Watt.Two foul old racists who will not be missed.
Pat Robertson-
Less than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina killed 1,836 people, Robertson implied on the September 12, 2005 broadcast of The 700 Club that the storm was God’s punishment in response to America’s abortion policy. He suggested that the September 11 attacks and the disaster in New Orleans “could … be connected in some way”.
Robertson’s response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake also drew international condemnation.Robertson claimed that Haiti‘s founders had sworn a “pact to the Devil” in order to liberate themselves from the Frenchslave owners and indirectly attributed the earthquake to the consequences of the Haitian people being “cursed” for doing so
James Watt-
Bragging about the diversity among a coal leasing panel, Watt quipped, “We have every mixture you can have. I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.”
Or rather, they will be sorely missed among other foul old racists.
Robertson was a bit of a loony, but as far as I can tell he wasn’t an arms dealer, a nonce, or a shill for Big Pharma. I don’t get the level of animosity directed at people who have done nothing worse than express their opinions in public.
Was he? In what sense? To the extent that I paid any attention to America’s fire-and-brimstone evangelical subculture, he didn’t strike me as a particularly likeable person, but nor was he particularly evil. He didn’t like gays and feminists. Well, OK. He’s allowed to not like them, and people were allowed to disagree with him. My point was that he doesn’t appear to have done anything to leave the world in a worse state than he found it. Religion has always been at the core of US politics, and I don’t think his particular variant of it was any better or worse than the currently-fashionable religion.
Fair enough, but that basically describes half of humanity. I was just musing on the phenomenon of someone being merely ‘a bit of a shit’ being the target of ‘I’m glad he’s dead’.
People hating famous dead people are looking for a boost. Ranting about Pat’s death? He didn’t like the ghays! Please. Not like he was a serial killer or something. He was moral boundary for a lot of people for a long time.
We could use a few more boundaries in the US. Build that moral wall!
No, it was referring to jp’s comment. I pretty much agree with jdsmith’s comment: although one might disagree with where PR put his moral boundaries, at least he had them, and he appears not to have been a hypocrite (unlike a lot of evangelicals). At least he was not actively working to destroy moral boundaries for ideological reasons.
