Glob-a-log

Remember this one?

“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.”

Yes, indeed, that was Pat Robertson, the Christian leader who wanted to take out the Venezuelan president Chavez.

And yes, it’s time for another award: The ‘Pat Robertson’s Awful Toss Award’, or the PRAT, in short.

The year has just started, of course, and it will be months before we will know the definite shortlist but already there is quite a field of worthy candidates shaping up. This week alone three potential candidates proved themselves to be eminently electable as the possible winner of the 2008 PRAT trophy.

The first of these three is the beloved ambulance-chasing TV psychologist Dr Phil, who was once the perfect paladin of Oprah Winfrey. (You can watch them here in happier times.)

Here’s how our good doctor earned his nomination:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. television personality and psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw on Monday scrapped plans to air a show about Britney Spears after he was criticized for a visit to the troubled pop star in hospital on the weekend. McGraw said he had planned to tape a show on Monday focused not on the tabloid side of Britney’s problems, but on other issues surrounding this case.

“Clearly, it is not just Britney’s family struggling to find a way to protect adult children who cannot be ordered or compelled to seek help,” he said. “Because the Spears situation is too intense at this time, and out of consideration to the family, I have made the decision not to move forward with the taping,” said McGraw.

McGraw later stated that he only regretted the fact that the ungrateful little bitch and her stupid family had refused to let him help them. (Or, in his own, more mealy-mouthed words, “I won’t apologize for reaching out to a friend.”)

You go, Dr Phil.

Incidentally, talking of his former adoring mistress, the big O herself, rumour has it that this is indeed what she did say to the egomaniacal quack: “You: go!”

Yes, indeed, the woman who made her billions by inviting people to bare all on television – and who is good buddies with dangerous cult freaks like Travolta & Cruise – that woman is now ‘furious’ at her former pet for wanting to do a show about Britney:

The fallout from Dr. Phil McGraw’s controversial meeting with pop wreck Britney Spears just keeps on coming. Now it’s not just Brit’s parents and mental health professionals giving the good doc a hard time. Queen of Talk Oprah Winfrey has had it with her tell-it-like-it-is protégé, reports the National Enquirer.

“Oprah is furious,” an insider told the magazine. “She expected Phil to apologize before the situation got out of hand. Instead he used the spotlight to tout his struggling talk show. … Oprah thinks he has completely lost his sense of right and wrong.”

So yes, Oprah is this week’s second strong candidate for the PRAT shortlist.

Still, both Phil and Oprah may not make it to that final shortlist after all. Not if we will see many more candidates like this week’s final hot favourites.

Everybody knows that the USA is a terribly divided country. So, it’s not often that you will, for instance, find Iraq war veterans and gay rights activist agreeing on certain issues. It is a very special person or organisation that can make this happen.

‘Special’ in the sense of loathsome, of course. In other words, perfect candidates for the PRAT award.

So, enter the third and last candidate of this week, the Radical Westboro Baptist Church:

The radical Baptist church known for picketing the funerals of American soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq has announced that they intend to protest Heath Ledger’s stateside memorial service because he played a gay character in “Brokeback Mountain.”

“You cannot live in defiance of God. He (Ledger) got on that big screen with a big, fat message: God is a liar and it’s OK to be gay,” said Shirley Phelps in a statement sent out by the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 16:27 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.