ABC FAMILY CHANNEL AND PAT ROBERTSON
A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN? OR A MATCH MADE IN HELL?
A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN? OR A MATCH MADE IN HELL?
I wonder how many other Smiling Atheists know that ABC Family Channel is the home to Pat Robertson's 700 Club's syndicated episodes, as well as one episode a week of Pat Robertson's 700 Club Interactive. My question is, "Should we be concerned about this?"
Obviously, any network with the word 'family' in its name really shouldn't be the home to a man like Pat Robertson. After all, we're talking about a man who has continually made doomsday predictions that have cost thousands of people millions of dollars, he's been outspoken about scaring children with threats of Hell to convert them to Christianity, and he's even a convicted criminal. So in all, he hardly sounds like the kind of man with whom I would associate the word family. This makes about as much sense as convicted sex offenders teaching Catholic middle school in Kenya and...oh wait, that's right. I forgot the Church not only doesn't have a problem with that, but has been found to relocate sexual predators to foreign countries and assign them to middle schools. But not to get off topic, I digress.
Let's get a little perspective into the background of ABC Family before we start judging their decision to air The 700 Club. ABC Family was actually started in 1977 as an extension of Pat Robertson's televangelist ministry under the name CBN Satellite Company. It wasn't even known as CBN Family Channel until 1988, which was renamed The Family Channel two years later in 1990. In 1998, The Family Channel was purchased by the Fox company Fox Kids Worldwide Inc. Not long after, parent company was bought out by The Walt Disney Company, along with two other Fox companies, Fox Family and Saban Entertainment. The Walt Disney Company, being the parent company of ABC, thus renamed the network to ABC Family Channel.
So, after a trip down lack of memory lane, knowing that Pat Robertson started the network in the first place puts a little bit of perspective onto why ABC Family would want to carry The 700 Club. Or does it? Well, actually, it's contractual. When the original CBN Family Channel was sold, Pat Robertson stipulated in the sale to the future possible demonic, Satanic, Jewish, Muslim, or just non-Christian, secular owners that they must air his 700 Club twice daily. Obviously, to counteract the evil, libelous, and anti-Christian messages of such shows as Metabots, Power Rangers and Boy Meets World.
However, I wonder why, since the contractual stipulation included by Robertson only demanded two episodes per day, why is it that Disney's ABC Family Channel airs three episodes of The 700 Club per day, one special 700 Club episode per week, and numerous other shows related to Pat Robertson's televangelist ministry? What is the connection?
Well, I'll get to the connection in a second, and then you'll understand the proceeding sentence. I think Pat Robertson belongs on ABC Family Channel. I think it's a better fit than Sarah Jessica Parker on the new TBS series, My Face Looks Like an Ugly Foot.
Pat Robertson's ideology is not as divorced from Walt Disney as people would like to think. And although Walt Disney is long gone, his ideology continues today. The image on the right is not photoshopped. I can't stress that enough. The image is from the 1943 Disney short film Die Fuehrer's Face, in which Donald Duck dreams he is a nazi soldier. He wakes up from the dream frightened as to insinuate it was a nightmare, so this piece of history can be forgiven. After all, it was 1943, it may have been a satire on our enemies, okay. However, there is more.
There was also another Disney cartoon short from 1932 called The Wayward Canary, in which Mickey Mouse is seen utilizing a cigarette lighter with the insignia of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, the swastika, upon it. Again, the photo to the left as not been altered in anyway. As I said about the Die Feuhrer's Face, it could be seen as satire on the enemy. However, in what sort of context was this lighter? Was Mickey Mouse playing a villain? Was it a parody? The answer to both questions is a big, fat, and more flaming than Liberace, NO! It was completely casual. It was entered casually. Are you starting to get that Mel Gibson vibe yet? Or is that not quite enough to convince you? Well, if you're a scientifically-minded person like myself, you should be saying, "Yeah, call me when you get some real evidence!" Well, let us continue, shall we?
In 1933, an organization called The German American Bund, or German American Federation was founded by Fritz Kuhn. The Bund's mission was to create a positive view of the Nazi Regime in the United States. To be more specific, one of its first and foremost initiatives was to spread the Jewish Boycott in Yorkville, Manhattan, New York, a heavily Jewish area at the time. Well, this is a nice piece of history for you, but how does this relate to Walt Disney?
Art Babbitt, animator of such Disney films as The Three Little Pigs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, and many more, once expressed interest, or concern, in Walt Disney's interest in the Bund. In fact, it wasn't Disney's interest in the Bund that concerned him, it was Disney's all out support of the Bund. According to Mr. Babbitt:
This is quite the incriminating statement from a man who had no known reason for ill-will against the man who gave him his first break as an animator, and made him a substantial amount of money. But wait, there's more.
In 1938, a German filmmaker, and Nazi Propaganda filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, came to Hollywood. She went explored every studio in Hollywood at the time looking for work in the United States, and the only man who would actually view the large film canister she carried with her was, wait for it, wait for it; Walt Disney! Walt Disney told the German filmmaker that he would certainly hire her if it weren't for the possibly damage to his reputation. In other words, if it weren't for the possibly PR nightmare, as if it weren't growing by this point anyway, he would have certainly hired a woman who made films glorifying Nazis before and during World War II.
Could this all be just conjecture? Well, the evidence only continues to pile up against Walt Disney. Disney's early films were known for rather racially fueled humor, and this is particularly seen in the original version of The Three Little Pigs. In the film, the Big Bad Wolf comes to the door of the pig's houses dressed as a stereotypical Jewish peddler. This sort of tasteless humor is also seen in the short entitled The Opry House. Look at the clothes Mickey Mouse wears while dancing.
During the Disney strike in the 1940's, Walt Disney referred to it as part of the "Jewish/Communist Conspiracy". In fact, Walt Disney was an adamant anti-communist as well. He was called during the McCarthy era as a "friendly witness" to name suspected communists. You can find the transcript here.
So, now that you know much of what there is to know about Walt Disney, how does Pat Robertson relate to this seemingly scheming little man with a pencil mustache and a cartoon mouse? Pat Robertson is a man with his own background, as many of you know. Here I'll run down a short list of Robertson's past that, to me, appears to make him fit right in with the Walt Disney Company.
Pat Robertson makes no secret about his early life as a faith healer. This, I would guess, has much to do with his repeatedly touted conspiracy theories regarding the pharmaceutical industry as well as his invention of the "New World Order". He's also made many Hitler-like quotes about Protestants. Robertson has claimed that many Protestant dominions, as well as Hindu and Islamic dominions, actually harbor the spirit of the Antichrist. But let us remember this is coming from a man who claims to be able to stop hurricanes with his bare hands.
Robertson has publicly and even violently denounced feminism, liberalism, abortion and homosexuality, which is truly no surprise to any of us. However, many might say Roberson went one step too far when he referred to Ariel Sharon's health problems as acts of God, and he went two steps too far when he called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez on his 700 Club program. But again, this is coming from a man who has had ties with Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Charles Taylor of Liberia, two world leaders who have repeatedly been condemned by the UN, as well as the rest of the Westernized world, for human rights violations and even war crimes.
Pat Robertson also later obliged a conversation live on his show where he had a discussion with fellow Smiling Atheist Bat Shit award winner, Jerry Falwell, about the attacks of September 11, 2001. Falwell, in this conversation, blamed the ACLU, feminism, paganism, homosexuality and abortion for the attacks, to which, Robertson responded, "I totally concur." So, much like the Westboro Baptist Church, Pat Robertson seems to think the 9/11 attacks were a welcomed act of God. Yeah, yet Bill Maher was fired for telling people to try to understand what happened on that day. But is that anymore ridiculous than when he, on the September 12, 2005 edition of The 700 club, said he felt Hurricane Katrina was an act of God in response to America's views on abortion? And do I really need to repeat an earlier blog about Pat Robertson's insane claim that the Haitian earthquake was the result of a pact made between the Haitians and Satan in order for the Haitian people to gain their freedom from the French?
In the end, it seems that Pat Robertson is a perfect fit for the Disney Corporation. He's an aging bigot with delusions of grandeur and a god-complex, who's theories on life seem to be along the same narcissistic lines of Adolf Hitler himself, both of whom certainly love to quote providence and manifest destiny any chance they can get.
And why not have Pat Robertson on the ABC Family Channel. I mean, as much as I enjoy some of their syndicated programming, I'd be more than willing to sacrifice. Why not also bring in Benny Hinn Ministries? Why not put Pastor Rick Warren on ABC Family? Why not move all programming related to Pat Robertson, Walt Disney and Adolf Hitler onto one channel? Wouldn't it be much easier to avoid these guanopheliacs if they were all on one lockable network? A network that is really easy to block on any cable box, satellite box or DVR system would be the perfect place for all of the country's zealots and criminals. This way, those who for whatever reason enjoy their programming can all be one channel, and the other 85% of the world can be somewhere else. Besides, doesn't keeping them all in a sort of quarantine just make it that much easier to keep an eye on all of them?
So please, ABC Family, in the twilight of your finite existence, I beg of you to round up the herds of sheep and shepherds alike onto your network. Don't worry, you may lose much of your programming because of it, aside from the more soulless and money-grubbing corporate shill shows, but it'll be worth it in the end. Because we all know that televangelists can get a $1,000 donation out of a welfare family, so just imagine how much they could get out of former TX Governor George W. Bush, who will surely watch your network from dusk 'till dawn, and so will all of his supporters, I'm sure.
Thank you for reading, and don't forget to follow me into hell with a smile.
Obviously, any network with the word 'family' in its name really shouldn't be the home to a man like Pat Robertson. After all, we're talking about a man who has continually made doomsday predictions that have cost thousands of people millions of dollars, he's been outspoken about scaring children with threats of Hell to convert them to Christianity, and he's even a convicted criminal. So in all, he hardly sounds like the kind of man with whom I would associate the word family. This makes about as much sense as convicted sex offenders teaching Catholic middle school in Kenya and...oh wait, that's right. I forgot the Church not only doesn't have a problem with that, but has been found to relocate sexual predators to foreign countries and assign them to middle schools. But not to get off topic, I digress.
Let's get a little perspective into the background of ABC Family before we start judging their decision to air The 700 Club. ABC Family was actually started in 1977 as an extension of Pat Robertson's televangelist ministry under the name CBN Satellite Company. It wasn't even known as CBN Family Channel until 1988, which was renamed The Family Channel two years later in 1990. In 1998, The Family Channel was purchased by the Fox company Fox Kids Worldwide Inc. Not long after, parent company was bought out by The Walt Disney Company, along with two other Fox companies, Fox Family and Saban Entertainment. The Walt Disney Company, being the parent company of ABC, thus renamed the network to ABC Family Channel.
So, after a trip down lack of memory lane, knowing that Pat Robertson started the network in the first place puts a little bit of perspective onto why ABC Family would want to carry The 700 Club. Or does it? Well, actually, it's contractual. When the original CBN Family Channel was sold, Pat Robertson stipulated in the sale to the future possible demonic, Satanic, Jewish, Muslim, or just non-Christian, secular owners that they must air his 700 Club twice daily. Obviously, to counteract the evil, libelous, and anti-Christian messages of such shows as Metabots, Power Rangers and Boy Meets World.
However, I wonder why, since the contractual stipulation included by Robertson only demanded two episodes per day, why is it that Disney's ABC Family Channel airs three episodes of The 700 Club per day, one special 700 Club episode per week, and numerous other shows related to Pat Robertson's televangelist ministry? What is the connection?
Well, I'll get to the connection in a second, and then you'll understand the proceeding sentence. I think Pat Robertson belongs on ABC Family Channel. I think it's a better fit than Sarah Jessica Parker on the new TBS series, My Face Looks Like an Ugly Foot.
Pat Robertson's ideology is not as divorced from Walt Disney as people would like to think. And although Walt Disney is long gone, his ideology continues today. The image on the right is not photoshopped. I can't stress that enough. The image is from the 1943 Disney short film Die Fuehrer's Face, in which Donald Duck dreams he is a nazi soldier. He wakes up from the dream frightened as to insinuate it was a nightmare, so this piece of history can be forgiven. After all, it was 1943, it may have been a satire on our enemies, okay. However, there is more.
There was also another Disney cartoon short from 1932 called The Wayward Canary, in which Mickey Mouse is seen utilizing a cigarette lighter with the insignia of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, the swastika, upon it. Again, the photo to the left as not been altered in anyway. As I said about the Die Feuhrer's Face, it could be seen as satire on the enemy. However, in what sort of context was this lighter? Was Mickey Mouse playing a villain? Was it a parody? The answer to both questions is a big, fat, and more flaming than Liberace, NO! It was completely casual. It was entered casually. Are you starting to get that Mel Gibson vibe yet? Or is that not quite enough to convince you? Well, if you're a scientifically-minded person like myself, you should be saying, "Yeah, call me when you get some real evidence!" Well, let us continue, shall we?In 1933, an organization called The German American Bund, or German American Federation was founded by Fritz Kuhn. The Bund's mission was to create a positive view of the Nazi Regime in the United States. To be more specific, one of its first and foremost initiatives was to spread the Jewish Boycott in Yorkville, Manhattan, New York, a heavily Jewish area at the time. Well, this is a nice piece of history for you, but how does this relate to Walt Disney?
Art Babbitt, animator of such Disney films as The Three Little Pigs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, and many more, once expressed interest, or concern, in Walt Disney's interest in the Bund. In fact, it wasn't Disney's interest in the Bund that concerned him, it was Disney's all out support of the Bund. According to Mr. Babbitt:
In the immediate years before we entered the War there was a small, but fiercely loyal, I suppose legal, following of the Nazi party . . . There were open meetings, anybody could attend and I wanted to see what was going on myself. On more than one occasion I observed Walt Disney and Gunther Lessing there, along with a lot of prominent Nazi-affiliated Hollywood personalities. Disney was going to meetings all the time.
This is quite the incriminating statement from a man who had no known reason for ill-will against the man who gave him his first break as an animator, and made him a substantial amount of money. But wait, there's more.In 1938, a German filmmaker, and Nazi Propaganda filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, came to Hollywood. She went explored every studio in Hollywood at the time looking for work in the United States, and the only man who would actually view the large film canister she carried with her was, wait for it, wait for it; Walt Disney! Walt Disney told the German filmmaker that he would certainly hire her if it weren't for the possibly damage to his reputation. In other words, if it weren't for the possibly PR nightmare, as if it weren't growing by this point anyway, he would have certainly hired a woman who made films glorifying Nazis before and during World War II.
Could this all be just conjecture? Well, the evidence only continues to pile up against Walt Disney. Disney's early films were known for rather racially fueled humor, and this is particularly seen in the original version of The Three Little Pigs. In the film, the Big Bad Wolf comes to the door of the pig's houses dressed as a stereotypical Jewish peddler. This sort of tasteless humor is also seen in the short entitled The Opry House. Look at the clothes Mickey Mouse wears while dancing.
During the Disney strike in the 1940's, Walt Disney referred to it as part of the "Jewish/Communist Conspiracy". In fact, Walt Disney was an adamant anti-communist as well. He was called during the McCarthy era as a "friendly witness" to name suspected communists. You can find the transcript here.
So, now that you know much of what there is to know about Walt Disney, how does Pat Robertson relate to this seemingly scheming little man with a pencil mustache and a cartoon mouse? Pat Robertson is a man with his own background, as many of you know. Here I'll run down a short list of Robertson's past that, to me, appears to make him fit right in with the Walt Disney Company.
Pat Robertson makes no secret about his early life as a faith healer. This, I would guess, has much to do with his repeatedly touted conspiracy theories regarding the pharmaceutical industry as well as his invention of the "New World Order". He's also made many Hitler-like quotes about Protestants. Robertson has claimed that many Protestant dominions, as well as Hindu and Islamic dominions, actually harbor the spirit of the Antichrist. But let us remember this is coming from a man who claims to be able to stop hurricanes with his bare hands.
Robertson has publicly and even violently denounced feminism, liberalism, abortion and homosexuality, which is truly no surprise to any of us. However, many might say Roberson went one step too far when he referred to Ariel Sharon's health problems as acts of God, and he went two steps too far when he called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez on his 700 Club program. But again, this is coming from a man who has had ties with Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Charles Taylor of Liberia, two world leaders who have repeatedly been condemned by the UN, as well as the rest of the Westernized world, for human rights violations and even war crimes.
Pat Robertson also later obliged a conversation live on his show where he had a discussion with fellow Smiling Atheist Bat Shit award winner, Jerry Falwell, about the attacks of September 11, 2001. Falwell, in this conversation, blamed the ACLU, feminism, paganism, homosexuality and abortion for the attacks, to which, Robertson responded, "I totally concur." So, much like the Westboro Baptist Church, Pat Robertson seems to think the 9/11 attacks were a welcomed act of God. Yeah, yet Bill Maher was fired for telling people to try to understand what happened on that day. But is that anymore ridiculous than when he, on the September 12, 2005 edition of The 700 club, said he felt Hurricane Katrina was an act of God in response to America's views on abortion? And do I really need to repeat an earlier blog about Pat Robertson's insane claim that the Haitian earthquake was the result of a pact made between the Haitians and Satan in order for the Haitian people to gain their freedom from the French?
In the end, it seems that Pat Robertson is a perfect fit for the Disney Corporation. He's an aging bigot with delusions of grandeur and a god-complex, who's theories on life seem to be along the same narcissistic lines of Adolf Hitler himself, both of whom certainly love to quote providence and manifest destiny any chance they can get.
And why not have Pat Robertson on the ABC Family Channel. I mean, as much as I enjoy some of their syndicated programming, I'd be more than willing to sacrifice. Why not also bring in Benny Hinn Ministries? Why not put Pastor Rick Warren on ABC Family? Why not move all programming related to Pat Robertson, Walt Disney and Adolf Hitler onto one channel? Wouldn't it be much easier to avoid these guanopheliacs if they were all on one lockable network? A network that is really easy to block on any cable box, satellite box or DVR system would be the perfect place for all of the country's zealots and criminals. This way, those who for whatever reason enjoy their programming can all be one channel, and the other 85% of the world can be somewhere else. Besides, doesn't keeping them all in a sort of quarantine just make it that much easier to keep an eye on all of them?
So please, ABC Family, in the twilight of your finite existence, I beg of you to round up the herds of sheep and shepherds alike onto your network. Don't worry, you may lose much of your programming because of it, aside from the more soulless and money-grubbing corporate shill shows, but it'll be worth it in the end. Because we all know that televangelists can get a $1,000 donation out of a welfare family, so just imagine how much they could get out of former TX Governor George W. Bush, who will surely watch your network from dusk 'till dawn, and so will all of his supporters, I'm sure.
Thank you for reading, and don't forget to follow me into hell with a smile.
