Smite the Hand That Feeds You

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it -- Voltaire

Continuing his uphill struggle against sanity and encroaching irrelevance, legacy evangetollah Franklin Graham has a message for all you disobedient kids out there:

Graham equated the Obama years with a national rejection of God. "In the last four years, we have begun to turn our backs on God," he said. "We have taken God out of our education system. We have taken him out of government. You have lawyers that sue you every time you mention the name of Jesus Christ in any kind of a public forum." Oddly, Graham ignored the fact that he and other shepherds of the Christian right have griped about such matters for much longer than four years. It didn't start with Obama.

As Graham denounced the Obama years, Newsmax's Kathleen Walter asked, "So we've become too secular a nation? How do we bring God back into government?" Graham replied:

Maybe God will have to bring our nation down to our knees—to where you just have a complete economic collapse. And maybe at that point, maybe people will again begin to call upon the name of almighty God.

Economic calamity was the one option Graham mentioned—as if only such a disaster could move the United States in the right direction.

It's almost sad to watch; first Graham's old man removed Mormonism from his website's list of cults just a couple weeks before the election -- at best a cynical, opportunistic, nakedly political move by an organization undoubtedly taking advantage of its non-profit status to advocate politically; at worst a revealing look at the transparent intellectual dishonesty of these people.

So it goes. As the mossbacks continue to die off, and more and more sentient beings grow up to realize that they don't need hucksters like the Grahams for much of anything, the televangelist breed will continue to fade into irrelevance. Which is great for the ideal of intellectual probity, but the world of comedy and satire will sorely miss that breed, until the next incarnation of P.T. Barnums come along.