Pat Robertson Suggests Gays With AIDS Wear Rings To Cut, Infect Others

Oh... so Pat finally got around to seeing "The Hunger".

Last night, CNN's Anderson Cooper  compared Robertson to the uncle* we all have who says crazy things.

*may have said "grandfather", I can't remember exactly which term he used.

ETA:

Anderson Cooper: Pat Robertson ‘blurting out nonsensical sentences in between chewing soft foods' www.rawstory.com

Yes, and Robertson is not alone. But he's probably the most outrageous.

Wasn't he the guy who called for Chavez's assassination on TV? I think I still have a copy of it lying around somewhere.
"...I think we should let the CIA take him out..." I think thats the exact quote from the video. He's another capitalist psychopath.

I don't think calling Robertson crazy is very productive. Aside from the usual denigration of mental illness, it overlooks the fact that these comments, which have been de rigueur for him his whole life, are violent, disgusting and even murderous for real LGBTQ people who have to live in a world where people believe and broadcast such statements. This is justification for queer-bashing and extermination, make no mistake. I don't care that CNN repeats them in order to attach some jocular "crazy uncle" label. It's sick and Robertson should be locked up, end of.

I think our CRTC received complaints about Robertson's show (the 700 Club). I'll have to check.

ETA: can't find anything on Google, so I guess his show is acceptable by CRTC standards.

Mórríghain wrote:

I think people understand that the term 'nutter' is not a slur on the mentally ill; tis a slur on people like Pat Robertson.

Perhaps you better leave that to the nutters to decide. Trust me, it's a slur. It gives our community a bad name.

hypnotized and programmed humans seem ill.

deprograming is difficult often impossible.

the memes implanted are highly viral.

but by losing all of our religions we are becoming masters of our own life.

instead of a bunch of perverted priests telling us all how to live.

There is a somewhat obvious one Rebecca - they are cranks. The term quite handily describes people who deliberately maintain positions that fly in the face of empirical evidence without having any "clinical" connotations, nor is it used (to the best of my knowledge) to pejoratively describe someone confronting mental illness.

[ETA: and it can be modified by popping in "harmless" or "hateful" in front of it to distinguish between benign and malign expressions]

Mórríghan wrote:

I'm open to suggestions.

Asshole?

Seriously though,  what usually happens when Robertson cranks out his latest theory about what gay people do or don't do, yes it earns a big laugh in the liberal hipster set and lots of play on Stewart, Colbert, Mahers, et al., and everyone gets to flex their mockery muscles -- but this move neglects two things: a) that Robertson and his ilk often say things like this to incite precisely this response from liberal Americans. It increases the division between populations that should be allied against hegemonic power and changes the terms of debate from economics and power to the bizarre and occult; and b) that Robertson is actively calling upon and providing justification for violence against queers to the people most likely to carry out that violence. This isn't an idle threat uttered buy a mad man -- it is a contrived, hateful incitement to commit violence against queer people broadcast across multiple news outlets and legitimated by the increased "debate" ("Did Robertson go too far?") held by the MSM to fill column inches and the 24-hour news cycle.

Laughing at Roberston might make us feel good that we are not like him or his audience, but it does nothing to mitigate the effects of his hate.

ETA. cross posted with bagkitty (I like crank too! See above.) and LULU

dp

Catchfire wrote:

Asshole?

'Crank' is heroin.

'Asshole' is too vague—Harper's an asshole, Robertson's an asshole, the guy who cut me off on the 401's an asshole, the dog owner who lets his dog crap on my lawn is an asshole. Asshole is the namby-pamby default insult (like 'fuck'; when someone uses it against you you know they've got nothing), chosen perhaps because it does not ruffle anyone's feathers rather than because it does. No, tis just too wishy-washy, like so many words and expressions in our lexicon. Just say 'No' to weak language.

I also think you've thought more about the possible ramifications of what Robertson said than did Robertson himself.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

 Asshole is an overworked term but it rolls off the tongue so easily.

Come to think of it... I think that's the part that gets those right-wing religious types worked up the most.

We can quibble over the pros and cons of words such as 'asshole', and others I ocassionally use that a few don't like, but what about Brampton Muslim cleric Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak, who told his followers that death by stoning, especially if you're an adulterer or gay, is good for the soul. I think this guy is more vile than Pat Robertson simply due to the fact that he's closer to home, my home at least. I also suspect more people will take him seriously.

I've brought the cleric up because he's someone who perhaps can be affected by Canadian law whereas Pat is virtually untouchable.

Mórríghain wrote:

[...]

'Crank' is heroin. [...]

Um, wrong. As a street name, crank is used to describe metamphetamine in powdered form rather than heroin -- indeed in effect it is pretty much the polar opposite of an opiate.

The other popular usage is usually defined as "an annoying eccentric person" and by extension the positions such a person is maintaining. It also lends itself to a lot of modifiers - total, hateful, harmful neo-Nazi, fucking, incredible, asshat.... the list goes on and on.

Athough this is the first time I have actually suggested the use of the term as a replacement for expressions that allude to mental illness, I have actually given quite a deal of thought to the question and arrived at the conclusion that it is particularly suitable. To my mind at least, it has the connotation that the individual to whom it is being applied is consciously choosing to support an irrational (and all too often destructive) position, while at the same time avoiding any suggestion that the reason for their choice has anything to do with any mental health issues [or, as Francesca has so aptly pointed out, making demeaning comparisons between the asshat in question and someone actually dealing with mental health concerns].

As I suggest immediately above, if you don't find it strong enough, start slapping on the modifiers. The point raised by Rebecca earlier (and which has been raised repeatedly in other threads) is, I believe an extremely important one, and my suggestion was offered in all seriousness.

the polite way of saying someone's head is stuck up their ass