Pat Robertson is not your ordinary Joe. In America he is as famous as the Statue of Liberty, though in a much different way. Robertson's words tend to find their way to people's spiritual side. This is a story of a man who was born to preach.
PAT Robertson is one name that's relatively unknown on our shores. In
America however, he is almost a celebrity, like Ted Turner. Reason:
Robertson is the No. 3 cable TV operator in the whole of the United
States. He is right behind CNN (Cable News Network) and HBO (Home Box
Office).
Alec Foege has done a fair bit of investigative journalism to shed light
on Robertson's empire. He has also taken much liberty with the right of
freedom of expression, and casts aspersions on his subject's character as
well.
Robertson, entrepreneur extraordinaire, is the chief executive officer
of International Family Entertainment, a group which recorded sales of
US$300 million in 1995. But he is much better known as the televangelist
host of "The 700 Club", a popular TV channel which promotes fundamental
Christian philosophy.
Robertson's media empire stretches across Africa, the United Kingdom and
Asia. Some of his books, which have impressed a sizeable number of people,
are The New Millennium, The New World Order and The Secret Kingdom.
Basically, his business is religion and his `boss' is God. But as Foege
puts it, the book is not about God nor religion. It is about Pat
Robertson, the man who talks about God to the millions in America who tune
in daily to his counselling words, or simply to watch a host of wholesome
shows broadcast over The Family Channel.
Foege's dislike for Robertson is thinly veiled. Perhaps his suspicions
about the man are justified, for the many reasons he provides between the
covers. Chief among them is probably Robertson's refusal to grant him any
personal interview for this book. Foege admits that he is "a very
difficult man to track despite the oceans of available information".
He adds: "Pat Robertson's empire resists summation ... Robertson wears
his point of view like Madonna wears her undergarments - on top of
everything else like a suit of armour." On that score, Foege possesses an
ability to drive home his point as if it was the last nail in the coffin.
The author came across like a man on a very personal mission - telling
audiences across America that they need to know a few relatively unknown
facts about this son of a distinguished US Senator, who is also the
descendant of two American presidents.
We are informed that Jim Bakker was once a close associate of
Robertson's. Bakker was a much-celebrated TV evangelist who fell from
grace in 1987 when he publicly admitted to having had an affair with
Jessica Hahn, a church secretary.
Foege spices up the book with colourful details of the Bakker-Robertson
business relation and how it came to a sorry end. But readers are left to
draw their own conclusions on Robertson's status. To be fair, Foege is
also quick to add that with his "news, information, guidance,
entertainment, three times a day, five days a week, this guy's a genius".
Robertson, in comparison to "crude backwater preachers like Jimmy
Swaggert, Oral Roberts and Jerry Fahwell", is clearly different. He stands
alone, proclaims Foege.
His humble beginning in TV broadcasting kicked off with a US$3 bank
deposit in 1961. With a little help from his father, he launched his
Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and his first Christian show was "The
700 Club", the name of which was forged by the fires of financial
desperation in 1963.
It seems that during the initial years, Robertson was very much against
commercials. To obtain funds, he came up with an ingenious "faith
partners" plan whereby CBN viewers can pledge money to his TV station.
The estimate was that the station needed US$7,000 to break even every
month. So he went on the air to appeal for donations from 700 viewers.
Within a week, Robertson had obtained half the targeted amount. Inspired
by this business manoeuvre, he continued his religious quest and the name
"700 Club" stuck.
It is a parody of sorts that Foege has chosen The Empire God Built as
the title of his book because at the end of the final chapter, what comes
to mind is not so much God but Robertson's hardsell to God-fearing
Americans who have the divine very much in mind.
Within these pages, Foege has surreptitiously inserted interviews with
CBN staff and others who hold Robertson in low regard. Whether or not that
was done in all fairness to the man who also started the American Centre
for Law and Justice is a matter of journalistic debate that will draw no
easy conclusion. But one thing is certain - the writer stresses
emphatically that there's more to Robertson than meets the eye.
If you intend to get this book to find out more about Robertson's
religious work, cast your eyes elsewhere. There is nothing religious here.
The facts and figures abundantly and strategically strewn across the pages
bear witness to the enormous amount of legwork and homework done by Foege,
on his second book. (His first was Confusion is Next: The Sonic Youth.)
The reader is drawn to Foege's line of argument that the man who founded
the Regent University and heads one of the United States' most powerful
lobbies called the Christian Coalition has masterfully planned his
corporate ascent from the Sixties to the Nineties with some deft moves in
the three powerful zones of television, technology and big business.
On the last page, Foege asks some pertinent questions: "Would they (the
viewers) think any differently if they knew that Pat Robertson regarded
the mainstream's gradual acceptance of homosexuals, whom he said the New
Testament had sentenced to death, as an indication that our society was in
its final stages of decay? That this man who counsels against a conspiracy
toward one-world government has himself spent his life sowing the seeds
for a self-styled evangelical global takeover?"
It would seem the author's conclusion is a trifle drastic because in all
honesty, I could arrive at none of my own. Looking from a safe distance,
away from the fallout of the American TV hype and the technological
finesse that machine-washes and blow-dries a very personal channel between
man and his Maker, any reader born of Adam can only say this of the book,
the writer, and Robertson, "... and they too will come to pass".
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