Pat Robertson 6/8/23
Pat Robertson is dead. So it goes.
He’s an odd figure for me to evaluate. Had he died maybe ten or fifteen years ago, I might feel more of a pressure release from the news of his death, like the experience of Jerry Falwell’s death in 2007. Ugh, at least that’s over. But Robertson clearly hasn’t been as relevant as he once was in his heyday, and his heyday lasted about a half-century.
I don’t want to give him any more attention than he deserves in this moment. He’ll get plenty. So let this be my hot take as he exits our mortal plane for whatever noncorporeal mode of existence awaits him, metaphorical or otherwise.
To me, the passing of Pat Roberson heralds the end of a certain kind of religious-conservative public figure: the kindly, elder moralist, passing out butterscotch candies to the grandkids on the sly, whose smile stops just below the eyes where the facial muscles start to clench in a menacing scan that could almost pass as a sign of beneficent concern, if you didn’t know better. Coat upon coat of old-fashioned folksiness pancaked over the fissures of a face cracked by decades spent delighting in cruelty.
Falwell wore this mask as well, and you could see it in their feigned performances of regret for those ravaged by diseases, violence, or natural disasters, victims of tragedy that, alas, brought their suffering upon themselves through sin. But no one did it as easily as Robertson in his later years, as he soaked his loathing in regretful condescension (he wasn’t mad, he was disappointed). Falwell, by contrast, was always smirking through his pomposity, signaling he would totally sic his goons on a guy who looked a little too smart or a little too girly. Pat and his ilk really were doing their dad-gum best to help us see the light of Jesus, goodness, and rightness, and it just broke their poor old hearts to see all the gays and abortionists and pornographers and adulterers and women with jobs always kicking the Cosmic Hornet’s Nest and unleashing God’s buzzing, swarming wrath.
We’re in a new era, the door to it kicked open by Donald Trump, in which those who relish the sorrows and torments of their cultural enemies do so without pretense. They are openly gleeful, dancing on graves and pouring salt into wounds. It’s more honest, but it’s also far more frightening, because at least when Robertson pretended to feel compassion for the suffering of sinners, he was tacitly upholding a societal norm holding that other people’s pain is not a victory to be celebrated, but a tragedy for all of us, even if their suffering was brought on as a result of their own misguided deeds.
The patronizing grandfatherly veneer is gone. (Sorry, Mike Pence.) The pancake makeup has melted under the radiation of the religious Right’s rage, red hot from resentment over their evaporating cultural relevance. If there’s anything to be said for the likes of Pat Robertson—and there is very, very little—it’s that their falseness had something of a regulating effect; cooler heads in a hothouse of grievance. While Robertson, Falwell, and their kind spoke of the glorious kingdom of the next life, we know the real power they sought was here on Earth. Their successors are all too eager to scorch it.
Paul Fidalgo is editor of Free Inquiry and executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism. For ten years he served as communications director of the Center for Inquiry. He holds a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University, and his writing has appeared in outlets such as Religion News Service, CNN, USA Today, Dark Mountain, and Android Police. Fidalgo is also an actor and musician whose work includes five years performing with the American Shakespeare Center.
He’s an odd figure for me to evaluate. Had he died maybe ten or fifteen years ago, I might feel more of a pressure release from the news of his death, like the experience of Jerry Falwell’s death in 2007. Ugh, at least that’s over. But Robertson clearly hasn’t been as relevant as he once was in his heyday, and his heyday lasted about a half-century.
I don’t want to give him any more attention than he deserves in this moment. He’ll get plenty. So let this be my hot take as he exits our mortal plane for whatever noncorporeal mode of existence awaits him, metaphorical or otherwise.
To me, the passing of Pat Roberson heralds the end of a certain kind of religious-conservative public figure: the kindly, elder moralist, passing out butterscotch candies to the grandkids on the sly, whose smile stops just below the eyes where the facial muscles start to clench in a menacing scan that could almost pass as a sign of beneficent concern, if you didn’t know better. Coat upon coat of old-fashioned folksiness pancaked over the fissures of a face cracked by decades spent delighting in cruelty.
Falwell wore this mask as well, and you could see it in their feigned performances of regret for those ravaged by diseases, violence, or natural disasters, victims of tragedy that, alas, brought their suffering upon themselves through sin. But no one did it as easily as Robertson in his later years, as he soaked his loathing in regretful condescension (he wasn’t mad, he was disappointed). Falwell, by contrast, was always smirking through his pomposity, signaling he would totally sic his goons on a guy who looked a little too smart or a little too girly. Pat and his ilk really were doing their dad-gum best to help us see the light of Jesus, goodness, and rightness, and it just broke their poor old hearts to see all the gays and abortionists and pornographers and adulterers and women with jobs always kicking the Cosmic Hornet’s Nest and unleashing God’s buzzing, swarming wrath.
We’re in a new era, the door to it kicked open by Donald Trump, in which those who relish the sorrows and torments of their cultural enemies do so without pretense. They are openly gleeful, dancing on graves and pouring salt into wounds. It’s more honest, but it’s also far more frightening, because at least when Robertson pretended to feel compassion for the suffering of sinners, he was tacitly upholding a societal norm holding that other people’s pain is not a victory to be celebrated, but a tragedy for all of us, even if their suffering was brought on as a result of their own misguided deeds.
The patronizing grandfatherly veneer is gone. (Sorry, Mike Pence.) The pancake makeup has melted under the radiation of the religious Right’s rage, red hot from resentment over their evaporating cultural relevance. If there’s anything to be said for the likes of Pat Robertson—and there is very, very little—it’s that their falseness had something of a regulating effect; cooler heads in a hothouse of grievance. While Robertson, Falwell, and their kind spoke of the glorious kingdom of the next life, we know the real power they sought was here on Earth. Their successors are all too eager to scorch it.
Paul Fidalgo is editor of Free Inquiry and executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism. For ten years he served as communications director of the Center for Inquiry. He holds a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University, and his writing has appeared in outlets such as Religion News Service, CNN, USA Today, Dark Mountain, and Android Police. Fidalgo is also an actor and musician whose work includes five years performing with the American Shakespeare Center.
