By Gary Earl Ross
Buffalo, NY – Hello and welcome to another edition of "Book Sugar," the public radio program that uses social trends to forecast which books will be on shelves within two years. Because of the current political climate and the documented decline in critical thinking, today's expected volume, from Clueless Blabbermouth Press, is The Moron's Guide to God by the Rev. Pat Robertson. Conservative Christian TV viewers are familiar with Rev. Robertson from The 700 Club, the flagship program of his Christian Broadcasting Network. Robertson has long been known for his penetrating explanations of what is wrong with modern America. In a 1992 fundraising letter he said, "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."
Decades of such fair and balanced insight have helped Robertson self-evolve into the voice of 21st Century Christianity. He has offered several public proclamations of the will of God. President Bush, God told him, would be re-elected in a landslide. To demonstrate God's new take on Thou Shalt Not Kill, Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and later warned the residents of Dover, Pennsylvania, God would abandon them in a natural disaster because they voted out an Intelligent Design school board. More recently, the good reverend attributed the massive stroke of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to God's displeasure at Israel's giving land to the Palestinians.
We here at Book Sugar feel it's time Pat Robertson turned away from managing a multimillion dollar media empire, running a Christian university, and investing in diamond mines and race horses to offer his message with the uncomplicated honesty it deserves in an age of declining literacy. The Moron's Guide to God will simplify Rev. Pat's essential truths: God is a big scary white guy somewhere in the sky who causes tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and plane crashes to get attention. He is the cause of heart attacks, strokes, and cancer-not diet, lifestyle, toxic exposure, and genetics. God also fixes U.S. presidential elections while ignoring world hunger, murderous dictators, and unequal distribution of resources. Rev. Pat is his chosen mouthpiece. His chosen people are those who look, think, and act like Rev. Pat. Anybody who doesn't, no matter how good or blameless, is going straight to hell. Because people who look, think, and act like Rev. Pat are the chosen ones, there really is no need for a Constitution. Once the Constitution is gone, Rev. Pat and his friends Jerry and Ralph will establish a theocracy to spread the word abroad by any means necessary-better burned than Buddhist, better atomized than atheist-and they'll punish the heretics at home. Who are the heretics? Catholics, Protestants not yet born again, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, humanists, feminists, homosexuals, liberals, the ACLU, and anyone appalled at the idea of worshipping a God who would choose a chucklehead like Pat Robertson as his spokesman.
If you believe the old Monty Python line, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition," you haven't been paying attention. For Book Sugar, I'm Gary Earl Ross.
Listener-Commentator Gary Earl Ross is a writing professor at the UB Educational Opportunity Center.
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