News

[drpaisley]

First, the good news: Joe Haldeman is named SFWA Grandmaster.

In other news, Tulsa, Oklahoma's most famous professional liar and fleecer of widows, orphans and the generally gullible, Oral Roberts, has died, some 25 years after he held himself hostage and demanded $8 million to keep God from killing him. The cash was not forthcoming, but Roberts was later found dumped by the side of the road in Sapulpa, none the worse for his hostage experience, save for an inability to properly judge the height of his kidnappers.

I was making buttons back then, and the "I Helped Oral Robert$ Die!" button was my best-seller, by far. I kept making a bunch, and they would immediately sell out. I was unable to keep the stock up enough to mail a batch to Bob Hise, who was living in Tulsa at the time, alas.

Bob did take Dragonet and I on a tour of the ORU campus, aka Six Flags Over Jesus, after OKon one year. It looked like someone had taken a bunch of architects, pumped them full of acid and locked them in separate rooms with some drafting paper and told them to draw a building. It's just a bizarre mix of styles and designs.

Oral is survived by his brother, Anal (thank you, Joe Bob Briggs). One less scumbag preying on the desperate. So many still around, alas.

Comments

[naamah-darling.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid we would often drive past the City of Faith on the way to other more interesting places. I honestly for-real thought that it had been built by aliens. I thought it was so cool, especially the turtle-dome building. I was so pissed off when I found out it was a televangelist.

[verminiusrex.livejournal.com]

That was one of the better news recaps I've seen in awhile.

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

Robert Tilton was getting established in Dallas at about the time of Roberts's 800-foot Jesus encounter, and reading about Roberts's insanity made me understand what made Tilton tick. I mean, sure, Oral blew a quarter-million on a 777-bed hospital that Tulsa didn't need (and that never came close to being fully operational), but at least when he prayed, he didn't look like he just crapped his pants.

[tapestry01.livejournal.com]

Oral Roberts had been on TV since before I was born, but I never even heard of him before I moved to Oklahoma. My first reaction to ORU was that it was the height of vanity for somebody to name a university after himself.

The other hospitals in town protested that Tulsa didn't need another hospital (mostly because they didn't need the competition) but Roberts got City of Faith built anyway; his reasoning was that it would serve his ministry from all over the world, and not compete with other Tulsa hospitals. Problem was, if somebody breaks their leg in Spokane they're not gonna go all the way to Tulsa to get it set. There's whole floors in City of Faith that have never been finished.

[farrandy.livejournal.com]

I heard once that when Kelly Freas was in town for OKon he and Polly were driven through the ORU Campus and his response was something like "What an amazing collection of architectural styles. Too bad none of them match."

The worst part about him dying is that here in Tulsa it will likely be the lead news story for a month. At Least. Four pages in today's paper, I swear to (900 foot) Jesus.