The radical cleric Pat Robertson was recently accused of advocating the assassination of Hugo Chavez. Now Robertson says that his comments were misinterpreted, taken out of context:
"I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.' And 'take him out' can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time," Robertson said on "The 700 Club" program.
He must speak a very different English from everybody else. This is exactly what he said:
"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it," said Robertson on Monday's program. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."
Taken out of what context??? The man is a flaming liar. He is also a compulsive flaming liar. This is not the first outrageous thing that has crawled out of his mouth:
He has suggested in the past that a meteor could strike Florida because of unofficial "Gay Days" at Disney World and that feminism caused women to kill their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians.
Indeed. Those are the very reasons I became a feminist. And the very reasons why Pat Robertson will not lose his television show for advocating the killing of foreign presidents (which appears to me to a terrorist act, by the way) have a lot to do with his outrageousness and money.
So the politically successful response to Robertson's oral offerings would be a gentle shaking of the head, a quiet aside about "inappropriateness" and a return to politics as usual. Except that the rest of the word is learning all about Robertson, too, and about the fact that he will receive at most a gentle chiding from our powers-that-be. This will hurt the country. Isn't that what anti-American treasonous people do? The ones that Robertson is always attacking?