"...My obscene wealth is proof once again, as a wise man once said, there really is one born every minute."

By Jayson Blair
Special thanks to The New York Times

Issue #192, March/April 2004

Visitors from across the globe converged on sleepy Waco, Texs, last weekend for the gala ceremonies accompanying Pat Robertson's induction as the first lifetime member of The Door Magazine's Loser of the Bi-Month Hall of Fame. Robertson's selection hardly came as a surprise – he'd been named Loser of the Bi-Month more often than anyone else in the The Door's 30-odd year history. Still, even Pat himself admitted he was touched by the turnout, which included a stellar sampling of some of the worst dictators of the 20th century, various disgraced politicians and the Fab Five from the popular Queer Eye for the Straight Guy TV series.

"I'm still a little overwhelmed," Robertson told reporters outside George's Restaurant before the ceremony. "To think that a poor little rich kid like me could amass an even bigger fortune simply by following my most mercenary instincts – and by saying it was the will of God! My obscene wealth is proof once again, as a wise man once said, there really is one born every minute."

Informed observers of the rapacious American televangelism scene had long speculated that Robertson had the inside track on being tabbed as the first lifetime member of the Loser Hall of Fame. Although Robert Tilton and Benny Hinn had made great strides in the latter half of the 20th and early years of the 21st centuries with their naked greed, flagrant opportunism and callous disregard for human suffering, Robertson's long head start, in the end, simply proved too much for either man to overcome.

"Yo, props to Pat-Man," said a visibly shaken Hinn. "I'm taking the posse back to my crib to lick my wounds. He's big pimpin'. True dat."

"Besides," Tilton added, "the rats are starting to eat my brain again."

The festivities began Saturday morning as the first of the stretch limos began pulling up to the well-known Waco eatery bringing a glittering array the celebrities, each of whom began their opening remarks by punching out Joan Rivers.

Representing the U.S. Supreme Court justices that Robertson had prayed would soon die for disagreeing with him was Bush advisor Karl Rove, who celebrated the occasion by fingering three more previously undercover CIA operatives.

"Pat's amazingly slanderous attacks on John McCain and Warren Rudman during the Michigan state Republican primaries back in 2000 still leave me a little awed," Rove gushed. "It's like he's divinely inspired when it comes to back-stabbing."

The biggest round of applause from the mostly Republican onlookers, save when Terry Meeuwsen bitch-slapped Martha Stewart, came with the arrival in an armored humvee of Jorge Serrano, former president of Guatemala. Serrano, a protégée of brutal dictator Gen. Rios Montt (an Amnesty International poster boy himself for overseeing the 2,000 extrajudicial killings carried out by the Guatemalan Army). Serrano, championed in Robertson's book The New World Order, paused briefly at the doorway to make a statement through an interpreter:

"I only wish our close personal friend, Mobutu Sese Seko, former dictator of Zaire, could be here to celebrate this joyous occasion. Pat and Mobutu worked hard on the African Development Company exploiting, that is to say, returning to the people, Zaire's vast diamond mines."

Once inside, the opening prayer was delivered by Frederick Chiluba, iron-fisted ruler of Zambia and another one of Robertson's closest friends – following a fawning appearance on The 700 Club where Pat held him up as a paragon of Christian virtue by locking all non-Christians out of the state-run school system.

"Dear Lord," Chiluba said, "let us praise America in the words of James Madison: 'We have staked the whole of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.'"

When a reporter for The Wall Street Journal pointed out to Chiluba that the quote – which Robertson once used in a full-page ad to solicit donations for Regent University – is entirely fictitious, Chiluba had him taken outside and shot.

The surprise guest of the evening was ultra-conservative billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch purchased the Family Channel for $90 million, which Robertson had started in 1977 with donations by viewers to his Christian Broadcasting Network. Robertson, of course, pocketed the proceeds. Murdoch issued a brief statement heralding Robertson's involvement with the particularly odious multi-level marketing scheme Kalo Vita, which ultimately left thousands of innocent people penniless:

"As the Kalo Vita debacle amply demonstrates, my mate Pat knows how to turn a grift. I admire a man with no morals and even less self-respect. I'd hire a man like Pat Robertson – if I could trust him."

The evening's entertainment was provided by members of the Ice Capades, which Robertson also owns, doing an interpretive ice dance to readings from Pat's first book, Shout It From the Roof Tops.

At last came time for the keynote speaker, former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Recently deposed by a multi-national army for crimes against humanity, Taylor arrived incognito. At the time, Robertson attacked President Bush for supporting the removal of the bloodthirsty Taylor – who has been linked with Al Qaeda – accusing Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels." Robertson termed widespread allegations of war crimes against Taylor as "nonsense."

Taylor embraced Robertson, held him in a head-lock and gave him vigorous noogies.

"I love this guy," Taylor said. "People say I'm crazy, people say I'm dangerous. And yet here's a man who can say on national TV, 'Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up.' You'd go atomic on the American State Department just because you disagree with them! Oh man, Pat – you are the nuttiest!"

Finally, Robertson himself took the podium, resplendent in an ill-fitting $5,000 Armani suit.

"Thank you, thank you, thank for this tremendous honor," he said. "But I don't want you to think it was easy. It took years of praying that hurricanes would hit other cities than my own. It took years of attacking homosexuals and blaming them for everything from the collapse of moral values in this country to the 9/11 disaster.

"Were there were times when I wanted to quit? You bet. There were dark times when I wanted to just hide out in my Virginia mountaintop mansion. But each day I came back out swinging at the perverts who say you can't own a racehorse and condemn gambling. Against the child molesters who questioned my plans for a power plant outside a small California town. Against the liberals who wondered how I could be so pro-life in this country and still support forced abortions of the godless Red Chinese.

"And you know why I kept coming back?"

Many in the audience rose as one and shouted in unison, "Why, Pat?!"

Robertson paused to blow his nose into a $600 Christian Dior silk handkerchief. Jerry Falwell reached over and tenderly patted Robertson, who was obviously overcome by the emotions of the moment.

"The reason I keep coming back," Pat continued, "is for all the little people. The poor widows, the African American women living on small pensions, the crippled old men living on Social Security. It's these people who blindly keep sending donations to charlatans like me. God love 'em! It makes me so proud to think that my apocalyptic ramblings could frighten a wizened old crone somewhere enough for her to send me her last dollar! That's what makes this country great! In fact, I think I'll go out and buy another racehorse!

"Now, who's a guy gotta sleep with to get a drink around here?"

* * *

Today, a week later, Waco is still recovering from Robertson's whirlwind festivities. Empty Kalo Vita bottles still litter some of the side streets and bounty hunters still comb the countryside looking for Charles Taylor.

Ole Anthony, publisher of The Door, said that Robertson's diamond-studded Green Weenie would be kept on display in George's Restaurant and that Robertson's name would be retired from future consideration in the magazine's legendary Loser of the Bi-Month competition as the first permanent member of the Loser Hall of Fame.

"We'll never see his like again," Anthony said. "Pat Robertson was a shark among minnows."

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