Stupid Thing of the Week, early edition (featuring Pat Robertson)

Friday is usually the day for our Stupid Thing of the Week, but this one simply can’t wait — and it’s not like anything more stupid than this is going to happen in the next couple of days, so here goes. Yesterday, the Rev. Pat “My prayers calmed a hurricane” Robertson said the reason an earthquake struck Haiti was that about 200 years ago, early Haitian revolutionary leaders made a deal with Satan to get rid of their French rulers. The video of Robertson’s statement, below, demonstrates once and for all the depth of this man of God’s knowledge of esoteric subjects. And his historical research is impeccable, too — note how specific he is when talking about the Haitian revolt, which took place while Haiti was under the rule of, “you know, Napoleon the Third, or whatever.” How can you argue with that kind of knowledge and erudition?

Enough sarcasm, though. This is the kind of raw stupidity we’ve all come to expect from Robertson over the years, including blaming 9/11 on gays and the ACLU. He was certainly on a roll yesterday. Before he revealed the Devil’s Pact Theory of History, Robertson told Bill Horan, a spokesman for a Christian relief group, that the earthquake could be “a blessing in disguise,” leading to the complete rebuilding of Haiti. Horan, looking momentarily stunned, managed to reply that, “uh, uh, that would be uh, a pretty optimistic uh, uh attitude.”  The same could be said of anyone expecting Robertson to come out of his bizarre fog and rejoin the real world anytime soon.

John Grooms will discuss and sign copies of his book, Deliver Us From Weasels, Saturday at 1 p.m. at Joseph Beth Booksellers at SouthPark.

This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2010.