Earthquakes and Evangelists

Haiti suffered a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, its largest in 200 years, with widespread devastation around the capital of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12.
Officials claim as many as 100,000 are dead, with millions left homeless.
Images of the earthquake zipped around the world, as Internet news sites posted photos from Port-au-Prince. Some of the iconic scenes captured include the domed Presidential Palace as a cracked mountain of rubble; people crying and dazed, their faces covered with blood; and city buildings resembling bombed debris from Iraq or Afghanistan.
But not everything is all piles of rubble and thousands of dead, exposed bodies rotting in the tropical heat.
Televangelist Pat Robertson placed a positive spin on the earthquake in Haiti.
Talking to Bill Horan, president of Operation Blessing, Robertson said, “If all those buildings are down, I understand more are falling than are standing, it may be a blessing in disguise. There might be a massive rebuilding of that country. Is that possible?”
Horan replied, “I don’t know. I would think that would be a pretty optimistic attitude.”
A blessing in disguise?
Are you fucking kidding me? Did Robertson see the photos of the children weeping, the collapsed walls crushing bodies and hundreds of displaced citizens sleeping on the streets?
I guess between hawking imitation prayer napkins and plastic dashboard Jesus statues, he missed the news accounts portraying the earthquake as what it really was: a calamity.
Yet according to Captain Christ, the earthquake was the best thing to happen to Haiti since the Port-au-Prince McDonald’s introduced the McPlantain.
Wait. It gets worse.
Robertson said those Haitian heathens with their voodoo, dreadlocks and godless ways had this coming.
Later in the program, Robertson said, “Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and the people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story. And the devil said, ‘Okay, it’s a deal.’ They kicked the French out and the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”
I’m sure the quake had nothing to do with the American and Caribbean tectonic plates being in close proximity to Haiti, with fault lines running through the island nation. It was that goofy devil theory.
Robertson said the island of Hispaniola is divided down the middle with the Dominican Republic being prosperous and Haiti “is in desperate poverty.”
Again, according to Robertson, politics and culture have nothing to do with one country being prosperous and another being impoverished.
It’s the Faustian pact.
But the earthquake claimed the lives of Archbishop Joseph Serge Milot and relief workers, soldiers and diplomats from other countries. You know: people whose ancestors didn’t turn to Beelzebub to kick the frogs off their island.
It’s hard to take these Elmer Gantry clones seriously when they have the temerity to expound on world issues.
Remember when that asshole Jerry Falwell blamed the September 11 terrorist attacks on everyone but the terrorists? Falwell said “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternate lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America” were responsible for hijacking airplanes, slamming them into the World Trade Center and killing over 3,000 people.
And I thought the only thing the gays killed was Ted Haggard's career.
According to Robertson, the Haitian earthquake is a bold opportunity to rebuild a Third World shithole and put a Starbucks on every corner. Or a Fatburger. Or a Walmart. Or whatever corporate American retail chain that could pump money into Haiti’s desperate economy.
“Out of this tragedy, I’m optimistic something good may come,” Robertson said.
It’s bad enough that the Haitians have a government that’s about as stable as Somalia, but does Robertson have to add insult to injury by praying for urban renewal at the hands of a cataclysmic natural disaster?
The only good thing to come out of this tragedy is the international aid rushing to assist the Haitian people. The United States sent emergency and rescue workers, military forces and equipment, while the United Nations gave emergency funds. Countries such as Germany, Spain, China, and Sweden are contributing money and manpower, while France, Britain, Iceland, Israel and Taiwan are sending doctors, rescue personnel and engineers.
This is when the world shines, when humanity shows a natural inclination to assist their fellow man through compassion and unity. It’s better than a prophet of doom espousing ignorance and superstition.