It ain't fraud if you invoke God..............

So last night I can't get to sleep, and I'm flipping aimlessly through the channels when I come across this guy, Don Stewart. Televangelist , prosperity pimp, hustler of the down trodden and gullible, and the proud owner of a forehead that is so disproportionately large, it's a fivehead, maybe a six. One of my guilty pleasures is watching late night televangelists. I am always amazed at the happy horse shit these nimrods sling from the TV screen, and Don did not disappoint. Don is a faith healer, seriously, no shit, saw it with my own eyes at 2 A.M. He made a couple of women walk, got right up out of their wheelchairs and danced a fuckin jig, one lady even did the Cabbage Patch or the Smurf, I get em mixed up. She got jiggy with it for Jesus, that's all I'm sayin.

Now I have been known to be a bit of a pessimist, always running around pissing in peoples Post Toasties, raining on parades, trying hard not to spill my half empty glass throughout it all. But I've got to say, I think Don of God might be on to something. Unlike that charlatan Benny Hinn, or Jimmy the John Swaggert, Don has magic cloths. Little green squares of some kind of holy fabric, put it on a leg and the lame can walk, lay it on a goiter or cyst and it will get small and disappear. He put that green Prosperity Handkerchief on a woman's chest and cured her Asthma. I'm impressed, last time I put something on a womans chest, I got a dirty look and a dry cleaning bill. It was like an infomercial for God, I kept waiting for that Aussie guy and his wife to come out and make nachos and fruity drinks with their Magic Bullet.

So the program would go from the healing revival, to Don , sitting at his desk, his big forehead filling the screen, while he read testimonials from the folks who had received his Prosperity Cloth. One woman says she got over a hundred grand and a new Mercedes, the very same day she received her cloth. I lost track of how many letters he read, all of them crediting the cloth and Don with curing their illness, filling their pockets, and in general making their former bleak and hopeless lives do a complete turn around. If that ain't fuckin magic, I don't know what is. David Blaine ain't got shit on Don Stewart.

My Grandmother, Clara, of the now infamous Marlow Oklahoma riding lawnmower collision probably wouldn't have approved of Don Stewart, she wasn't one of those ask and ye shall receive types, didn't believe that God dealt in currency. That said, she wasn't immune to religious charlatans, they were just of a different cloth back in her day. My grandfather, Delbert, would always try to beat her to the mailbox so he could peruse her mail and chunk the envelops from guys like Oral Roberts and his ilk. Clara couldn't turn down a plea for coinage from Oral , and Delbert, well Delbert didn't play that shit. Delbert owned a hot tar roofing company, he busted his ass on flat roofs, the Oklahoma sun beating down, while the heat from the hot tar rose up, leaving Delbert stuck in the middle. Delbert was a no nonsense raw boned Okie, he could smell bullshit a mile away. Clara on the other hand believed anything oral Roberts would tell her.

I remember these little cards that she collected, they had pictures of native American children on the front, and on the reverse was an appeal for money. Mind you I was 8 or 9, so I never questioned the fact that the kid was dressed like a stereotypical native American from the 1800's. Apparently Clara didn't notice that either, she just wanted to get some money out to O.R. to insure that this kid got some new moccasins and Davey Crockett style buckskins. When Oral Roberts climbed up in his Oklahoma tower, swearing he wouldn't come down until he reached a certain monetary goal, my Grandfather took Clara's name off of their bank account, lest she send his last dime to the Brylcreamed douche bag.

This post isn't a slam on organized religion, I'll save that for another time, for now I'm concentrating on the hustlers and con men who pray on the folks who believe in shit like magic cloths, healing water, and holy nails. These scumbags have been around since Christ was in Kindergarten, taking money from the lonely, the elderly, the fearful, while enjoying immunity from prosecution, under the umbrella of religion. I've always found it odd that the U.S. Attorney, the Justice department, and countless other enforcers of the law, turn a blind eye to the various scams and false claims of the Televangelists. I suppose the waters are a little murky, what with the supposed separation of church and state. Still one can't help but wonder about a legal system that has no qualms about sending some 18 year old black kid to prison for the rest of his life over a couple of ounces of Crack, while turning a blind eye to religious hucksters who fleece some of our most vulnerable of their life savings.