Providing yet another example of the Christian Right's version of Christian love and patriotism, Pat Robertson announces that he thinks blowing up the State Department would be dandy. Interviewing a rightwing author of a book very critical of the State Department, Robertson had this to say on his flagship 700 Club program:
"I read your book," Robertson said, according to a transcript of the interview posted on his Christian Broadcasting Network's website (www.cbn.com).
"When you get through, you say, 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom [the State Department], I think that's the answer'," he said.
"I mean, you get through this, and you say, 'We've got to blow that thing up.' I mean, is it as bad as you say?" Robertson asked.
The standard reaction for rightwingers who get embarassed by having stuff like this publicized outside their fan base is to start furiously parsing the words to say he shouldn't be criticized for saying what he said.
The State Department took what strikes me as an unusual step of making a formal complaint to Robertson. Department spokesporson Richard Boucher said Robertson's comment was "despicable," an accurate characterization. Also, an anonymous "senior department official" claimed that "a protest had been made 'at the higest level'."
I don't know if "highest level" in this case means the President, but presumably it means at least Secretary of State Colin Powell.
As much as I dislike Robertson's extremist politics, his fanatical religion and his anti-Semitic conspiracy-theory view of history, there's something disturbing about the fact that the State Deparment made it so public that they had greeted his raving with such high-level responses. Why didn't they just publicly dismiss him as an extremist kook? Or refer the remark to law enforcement for review? After all, if most of us had made a remark like that on television, we might well receive a visit from the Secret Service or the FBI.
Maybe we should at least be happy that, in this case, some Administration officials are willing to criticize a prominent Republican leader for "hate speech."
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