Who Would Jesus Assassinate?

We at the Blasphemy Blog are not afraid of Pat Robertson. He just doesn't seem that scary to us, and never has. This is because, we recently realized, when we first saw Pat Robertson on television, he wasn't himself...literally. He was being portrayed by Al Franken in a Saturday Night Live parody, and portrayed very well. Now, whenever we see or hear the Reverend Robertson, we just think of Saturday Night Live, one of our favorite shows, and smile.

We hope that President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has a good sense of humor himself, because the Reverend recently went on TV and called for Chavez' assassination. That's the kind of thing a President might take personally.

Now, we don't think Pat Robertson really meant it. He sometimes gets carried away, saying things like judges are worse than terrorists and gay people caused 9/11, but he usually takes it back. Sometimes you get caught up in the moment when you're on camera; we know we have.

The main thing we hope, though, is that when and if Robertson does apologize, he apologizes as a Christian. That is to say, we hope he condemns his own remarks because no Christian would ever call for the assassination of another human being. It's simply not something Jesus' teachings countenance, and for any church leader to let people think otherwise is an obscenity.

So we hope the Reverend will do that. Because even preachers make mistakes, and all he has to do is say he's sorry. It's not like we expect him to be infallible or anything.