ON TED. So we've seen Pastor Ted Haggard's (alleged) Field Guide To The Seven Deadly Sins released by dribs and drabs over the last couple of days. But just to make it clear that people like Haggard should be treated with nothing less than the absolute pie-in-the-face ridicule they so richly deserve, see this clip of him from a while back, prior to this week's festivities. This isn't religion. This is a psychological cargo cult that provides a marvelous environment for fakes and charlatans to act out twisted psychological problems in a fashion that would have embarrassed the boys in Led Zeppelin. This isn't a minister of the gospel. The man is a medievalist loon. "Personal relationship with his Lord and Savior," my aunt Fanny. If he has one, it's pretty plainly dismal and dysfunctional. And, remember, the president of the United States takes advice from a guy who believes that Gandhi is in hell. And people laughed at Nancy Reagan for hiring an astrologer, and Hillary Clinton for her chats with Eleanor Roosevelt. The most underrated of our essential founding documents is James Madison's "Memorial And Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" from 1785. Somebody should get up in Pastor Ted's well-upholstered pulpit and read it to the assembled mooing next Sunday. And then they should, all of them, leave us the hell alone.
--Charles P. Pierce
