On Sunday night, John Oliver blew the lid off the world of sleazy televangelists who not only pull off the most heartless scams imaginable on innocent and naive people, but enjoy the fruits of their crimes tax-free!
I shared a few highlights from the segment on this morning’s show, but you really need to watch the entire thing:
Perhaps it was divine intervention that had John Oliver focus in on these despicable miscreants right before Americans United for Separation of Church & State executive director Rev. Barry Lynn was scheduled to return to the show.
The insanity of tax-exempt status for “houses of worship” is something he has been fighting, and we’ve discussed on his previous visits to the show. Today, he joined in to tell us about his new book, God and Government: Twenty Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom of Conscience. It’s a collection of his articles, testimony, speeches and other writings from the past 25 years.
And we talked about John Oliver’s piece too.
In the second hour, I welcomed Will Bunch back to the show. No stranger to writing about Republicans who everyone thought could never become president (his book Tear Down this Myth is all about the Reagan presidency), his latest over at his Attytood blog at the Philadelphia Daily News is entitled “From Howard Stern to Donald Trump as democracy amuses itself to death“.
Speaking of Trump, I did find that scene in Being There that I was reminded of while watching Meet the Press. When asked “Who do you talk to for military advice?” Trump answered “I watch the shows,” my mind went to Chauncey Gardener.
