OFFICIAL 2016 APOLYTON CELEBRITY DEAD POOL

[Uncle Sparky]

Best Buddy Hackett picture I could find. Haters gotta hate.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Sparks:

Also, please change your avatar.

[Uncle Sparky]

Oscar winning director Milos Forman is dead.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/milos-forman-dead-hollywood-reactions-1102792

[-Jrabbit]

Well, "a" Bozo the Clown is dead. Not my Bozo (Bob Bell, WGN Chicago, 1960-1984), who died in 1997. There were many.

Full list of Bozos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_the_Clown

Fun fact: Bob Bell's Bozo voice was used as the template for Krusty the Clown on The Simpsons.

[Uncle Sparky]

http://www.eonline.com/news/922357/bozo-the-clown-star-frank-avruch-dies-at-89

Bozo the Clown is dead.

[pchang]

Louise Slaughter, congresswoman from NY died after a fall aged 88.

[Uncle Sparky]

One with the cosmos...

[pchang]

Stephen Hawking

[Lorizael]

(does not equal sign)

!=

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Jesus + Buddy Jesus (does not equal sign) buddies, much to Buddy Jesus' bewilderment. -Loved that movie, and a great deal of the bad theology was actual RL bad theology.

[Lorizael]

You couldn't possibly expect him to have tried to pay the ministry's overhead and make a living with merchandising - he could have done so, one imagines, quite profitably, with all the potential of that to turn the ministry into just showbidness, and that's real money-lenders-in-the-temple stuff, and we know what Jesus thought of that.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I'm somewhat better informed than JM on Billy Graham - my dad was a big fan, though I never saw it. He was no worse than anyone else in his line of work -big-deal TV preacher, and I do acknowledge what faint praise that makes it- by any metric I can imagine, usually far better, and the huckster smear is just that, Wezil. You've got him confused with all the others.

I sat through far more Graham sermons on TV in the 70s than I care to remember and have recently discussed it extensively with Mom, who cares to remember a great deal more; he never mentioned contributing to the Billy Graham Crusade. One of the other speakers would do that, and very briefly. The Bible is pretty adamant about tithing, and preachers essentially live on tips. Not asking and accepting support simply isn't done. You couldn't possibly expect him to have tried to pay the ministry's overhead and make a living with merchandising - he could have done so, one imagines, quite profitably, with all the potential of that to turn the ministry into just showbidness, and that's real money-lenders-in-the-temple stuff, and we know what Jesus thought of that.

The North Carolina Southern Baptist news publication Biblical Recorder once ran a list of big-time TV preachers and what they paid themselves; Oral Roberts or someone like that -it's been decades- was on one end of the list, with millions. Graham -it's been decades, but I recall this part clearly- was at the other, with $80,000yr in circa 1990 dollars. -It's more than my dad made, but not by a lot.- He could, surely, have punked the top of the list and gotten away with it. (Astonishingly, theocon fascist dirtbag Jerry Faldwell came in second by that measure of personal integrity, at around $100,000.)

No, Graham believed in Jesus, and wanted you to, too. Full stop. -Unfortunately, the Bible has some noxious stuff in there, but he still didn't take the, for instance, anti-gay bigotry over the top any more than the reverend doctor my-little-brother, who knew better before a couple of conservative seminaries ruined him; wrong, but certainly not as hateful about it as the Bible is.


Now Franklin Graham, since Mr. Miller mentioned, has done a lot of good in the world with his excellent Samaritans' Purse charity - before he decided to be the successor of theocon fascist dirtbag Jerry Faldwell, instead of his far-superior dad,.and ruin everything devoting himself to un-christlike hate politics. I wouldn't give you a nickel for the piece of crap, though I'd scrape up hundreds to pay you to haul him away.

[Jon Miller]

I have heard ads by his son, who comes across as worse than Ben/Kid and I don't want to claim Christian brothership towards.

JM

[Jon Miller]

But pretty good defence for a human.

I don't know enough details to know about the 'huckster' complaints. I will posit that for the unreligious the religious giving money to promote religion all seems like a sham... but it isn't. It is the religious giving money to what they think is important, to provide an important service to others.

What is a sham is if the pastor/etc is diverting the money for personal use or living an unreasonably grand lifestyle or etc.

To my knowledge he never reached the level of Jim Bakker or the like, but of course that is not a very high bar.

My, not very well informed, opinion is that he was good for a TV evangelist and was a net positive as a man of faith/etc, but doesn't reach the high level that King/Tutu (for example) reach (nor some of the non-famous pastors of my aquientance).

JM
(He seems to be overall good but with some weaknesses like the local pastor that we have when we attend the assemblies of God church in Naperville (http://www.calvarynaperville.org/) which I consider a good church and have supported with my giving.)

[Wezil]

I think "everyone else was doing it that way" is a pretty poor defence for a man of god.