Anal...er, Oral Roberts Univ here in Tulsa changes 'dress code'

[karlschneider]

on KOTV just now. Ties for men students are now optional, and women can wear pants (slacks)

The most ironically funny part of this whole evil enterprise is that for the last 20 years, the gay bars in Tulsa have been favorite hangouts for the 'students' at this ridiculous excuse for an institute of "higher learning."

(I was a friend of Oral's son Ronnie at Edison HS many years ago. Been to his house, before it was traded in for a 40,000 sq. ft. mansion)
He committed suicide a year after we graduated.

There are no words in my personal vocabulary, which is hardly bereft of adjectives, to describe the depth of my disgust with this bunch.

Unless I get started on Bush and that gang...that's another whole new subject.
:grr:
:grr:

[rooboy]

1. Has 'Oral' been called home yet???

I spent many fun-filled hours in my childhood watching that boob on tv.

[ezgoingrl]

2. I went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago

and there was a man there that looked almost exactly like Oral about ten years ago...same hair...same style of suit. YUCK

[RummyTheDummy]

3. Hey Karl....

I'm a native of Tulsa. I remember once I pulled up to a stop light and next to me in their overblown Mercedes sedan (paid for by a bunch of conned senior citizens, no doubt) was none other than Richard Roberts and his lovely wife. Screaming at each other. They were utterly at each others throats. Random but funny.

On edit: Didn't know that about his son committing suicide though. Fascinating example of good old fashioned Christian parenting. I understand Oral spends most of his time in Palm Springs now.

[JasonBerry]

4. Is that his son that has the show now?

Surfing the channels I see a younger version of Oral Roberts on TV and he seems every bit the scheister as Oral. That same hilarious slicked back hair with Brylcream (they still make that stuff?) or something. Ugh. Is that his son? Is Oral still around? By the way, why do you suppose the change in policy at the school? My guess is they need students who WANT to go there so they are selling out their beliefs for the $$$$. Surprise!

[RummyTheDummy]

5. Yeah, RIchard Roberts.

Oral's wife also used to come in the dept. store I worked at and spent out the wah-zoo. She'd walk out wiht thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff.

[tibbiit]

8. do you tulsalites remember

billy james hargis?
His son was a friend of my brothers at edison high school too:)
He was actually an okay kid-- I used to have fun baiting him about his dad's crazy assed religious tv show. (As Gallery/Hustler (meaning a little raunchier?*) is to Playboy, Billy James Hargis was to Oral hehe)

* althoug these days playboy has kept in step with the rest eh?

As a really young child, my brother and I would laugh our heads off putting our hands on the tv screen for Old Oral to heal us. Even at age 6 we knew it was bs and watched it for fun. My dad used to turn it on just like we may watch a few minutes of Jack Van Impe... just to hear what nuts stuff they are talking about.

Hi T-Town peeps:)
ex-tulsa-patriot
tib

[Art_from_Ark]

27. I remember Billy James Hargis, head of American Christian College

I believe his show was broadcast on KTUL Channel 8 back in the early 70s. I remember him talking about the Nixon-McGovern election in '72 and telling how the Red Chinese were poised to strike the US if Nixon wasn't elected. So maybe he was the first wave of political flunkies acting as right-wing preachers.

It also seems that ol' Billy was involved in some sort of career-ending scandal. So maybe he was a trend-setter in this area, too.

[SaintLouisBlues]

6. What do you call two gays named Bob?

Oral Roberts

(forgive me)

[JasonBerry]

7. If You're Into Reading a Great Expose

This is all something I get into as a hobby. You know, evangelist-watch. Have you ever seen Paul and Jan Crouch on TBN - the "Trinity Broadcasting Network"???

The Orange County Register did a 5-article expose some time back that exposed Paul and Jan Crouch and you would NOT believe some of the things they learned. Stuff about their new headquarters and all sorts of gag-me kind of stuff. Eye opening to say the least. Okay.....

Quick time out and I'm back....I just went and grabbed the URL for the download of the 5 articles in .zip format. It's THAT fascinating if you're into that kind of thing.
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/tbnarticles.zip

Thanks for little slice-of-life look inside the Roberts family.

On Edit: I went and left out the URL......longgg day.

[TlalocW]

13. Another just general expose of evangelists is

James Randi's "The Faith Healers." That book just pisses me off every time I read it. Oral isn't given too much space in the book unfortunately, but it's enough. One of the interesting things mentioned was that when Oral was doing tent revivals back in the 40s or 50s, movies shot in different cities of Oral healing people showed the same woman (performer) going on stage to get healed. There was also something about claims that Oral had raised the dead (as if parking isn't bad enough).

A regular in the arcade that I used to work at last year for some extra Xmas money told me that he had gone to ORU and was disillusioned with it. He said in the mail room, there are a lot of workers whose only assignment is to open up the letters with donations, grab the money and cash in them, and toss out the prayer requests. He still believes in certain weird things like he claimed he saw a woman healed of cataracts at some bigwig's private home - apparently they popped right out of the woman's eyes and gelatinized. I do my best to demonstrate basic stage magical principles to people like him in order for them to see how they operate and will rail against scum like Oral any chance I get.

TlalocW

[TlalocW]

9. I'm in Tulsa now

I have a friend who is acquaintances (I've met him a few times too) of one of Oral's grandsons from the estranged side of the family - it could be Ronnie's kid (a suicide could be enough for those bastards to write family members out of their lives since it's not very "christian"). Quite the womanizer and drinker - I don't know if it's because of Oral's rejection or what.

I didn't know about the gay bar thing. There was an ORU student killed earlier this year in a fight at a strip club.

Along with dress code, they don't accept overweight people if they can help it as gluttony is a sin according to a woman I knew who had graduated there. That woman, by the way, was convinced I had supernatural powers because I did a magic trick (one of the simplest ones out there) for her.

Oral was back in town (from Palm Springs) not too long ago. Picture on the upper flap of the Tulsa World with Richard, Richard's wife, and four other evangelists all laying hands on him. Apparently, he had been having another conversation with the devil, in which it was revealed that the great deceiver himself was the cause of Oral's recent bout of pain, and of course, if he renounced God, the pain would go away. Of course, Oral didn't, and then Jesus showed up, shooed the devil away and rewarded Oral by taking some (not all) of his pain away - so we needed to give and give generously to ORU to thank God. The blurb underneath the photo was more succinct than that, but it was written as fact - no, "Oral says that Satan, etc. etc. etc." No, it was, "Oral recently had a visit from Satan..."

TlalocW

[aquart]

10. Well, of course he had a visit from Satan.

Friends visit.

[TlalocW]

11. A funny story

I have a friend who lives in Seattle now. When she lived in Tulsa, she would watch the religious shows on Sunday morning because there was nothing better to do. Along with ORU, there are other mega-churches, another religious university (Rhema) in Broken Arrow (a large suburb of Tulsa), and some church called Bible Victory Church (I think). She was watching the Victory tv show, and the minister/con-man founder was taking telephone calls. So she calls in.

The screener asks what she's calling for, and she says she's single and pregnant and thinking of getting an abortion. WELL... she jumped straight to the front of the phone queue, and while waiting to be put on the air, the screener prayed with her that Satan wasn't going to take her baby, etc.

She gets on the air with the minister, and they talk, live, on air for about five minutes about her not getting an abortion, etc. My friend is very intelligent and lead the conversation to the point where it looked like she chose bad men to get into relationships on a regular basis, which prompted the minister to tell her that she just needed to find a good man, and everything would be okay in her life. He then asked her where she had met the father of her child.

Her reply: "Oh, it was at your church."

Just as quickly as she was put to the front of the queue, she was yanked off of the air where the screener once again prayed with her that Satan wouldn't take her baby.

She then laughed for an hour.

TlalocW

[JasonBerry]

12. That is FUNNY - a Guerrilla Strike!

~

[sable302]

14. Oh, and don't forget

Willie George's 'Church on the Move'

And 'GUTS' Church.

Yes, all you atheistic DU folk, there really is a church in Tulsa OK names 'GUTS.'




edit: blasted typos

[RummyTheDummy]

22. Yeah, I've remember GUTS...

Isn't that where Caravan used to be, the sleeziest and most violent teen club in the Southwest.

[worldcomflunky]

17. Good story TlalocW

I am also a fellow Tulsan. Well, rather I live in the "suburbs" in Broken Arrow. Not to far off from The Rhema university you mentioned. You have to give Rhema credit for one thing. They put up one hell of a Christmas light show in December. If you haven't seen it, it's worth checking out this December. I used to work in the Golden Towers at CFS from 1996 to 1999. Truly beautiful buildings. Hard to believe that whole area around there was built with peoples hard earned money that they threw blindly at Oral. Speaking of crazy religous whackos.

Anybody out there in DU land know if Dr. Gene Scott is still going at it? When I had the big satellite dish I could pick him up. He was funny as hell. Smoked a cigar the whole time and always showing himself with playboy type models following him around in his everyday life. He didn't even try to hide the way he spent his money from his followers. Loved when it he would say "Start the music". If that old bastard is still alive swindling people, then I will have to admit I am impressed.

[JasonBerry]

18. DR. GENE SCOTT

What a HOOT!!! (Or is that "nut"???) He has always been good for a laugh with his "hippie christianity." Still at it??? You bet!
http://www.drgenescott.com/home.htm

[worldcomflunky]

20. Thanks for posting that JasonBerry!!!

You just brought back a TON of memories of me and my friends watching him on the big dish. The guy is better than 99% of the comedians out there. I had COMPLETELY his absolute LOVE for horses. They would always be showing him riding his horses when they were in a down time and trying to take donations. It was always highly entertaining to watch the scantily clad women he would show on his show that would hang out with him at his house. How people justify to themselves to donate money to this guy is beyond all logic. I got to give credit to the old geezer that he is still able to do it like he could in the could old days. I will have to check out his website. Oh....by the way, thanks for the pic of hmi playing the sax. Now I will not be able to sleep tonight because that image is burned into my brain:).

[JasonBerry]

21. You REALLY want some memories??????

He is on LIVE right now - HERE:
http://play.rbn.com/?url=dolores/dolores/live/dolores.rm&proto=rtsp

On edit: Reading letters as always!

[RummyTheDummy]

23. I think it's Victory Christian Center....

With the honorable sleaze bag Billy Joe Doherty (no kiddin) presiding. And those people are true holy rollers even in the Tulsa sense.
What's with Tulsa and all the holy rollers. Victory, Oral Roberts, Rhema and I know I'm leaving some out.

[JasonBerry]

24. I wonder why? Tulsa is actually a very neat little city

I remember a very pretty view driving into Tulsa once over the Arkansas River. We went to a few places while I was there and found it very nice. Very Green for Oklahoma. Oklahoma City seemed to have more of a "night scene" with a nice entertainment district, pretty canal, lots of clubs, restaurants, etc. - but Tulsa had a nice midwestern city feel to it. WHAT is it that took so many holy rollers there? I don't remember it seeming all that different than a lot of cities that size - but I suppose it is with all of them running loose.

[RummyTheDummy]

25. Tulsa

Is a lot prettier than Oklahoma City. It's very green with trees. Thus the nickname Green Country.

I live in OKC now, and there's actually more stuff to do here. I imagine Tulsa has so many holy rollers because it's in the bible belt and ORU has been around for so long. It probably attracted other "ministers" to the area over time.

[OKNancy]

29. Lots of Holy Rollers but lots of backlash too

Tulsa has one of the largest per-capita Unitarian memberships in the US, also a huge open gay community.

It does have a nice city feel to it and the religious folk aren't "running loose" as far as annoying people or anything. As long as religion doesn't come up, things are pretty friendly here.

Oklahoma is a funny place. One writer in the old UrbanTulsa newspaper said the what was bad about Oklahoma is what is good about it. I've met thousands of people though my business and I've noticed that the kindest and most supportive were what would be called red-necks or working class types and the old money rich. The most hateful and demanding are the upper-middle class types that think their children are all superior and that I am a "servant".

Politically the state is also weird. There is a strong undercurrent of populism here. Hell, I believe Eugene V. Debs got 33% of the vote back in the 1930's. Oklahoma had a blind Senator...Thomas Gore, the grandfather of Gore Vidal and the great-grandfather of Al Gore. Anyone remember Fred Harris? Mike Synar? Carl Albert?

[maxanne]

15. good old Oral

In 1980 he claimed he saw a 900 foot Jesus in Tulsa, at an intersection. For years pranksters put up signs "Warning 900 foot Jesus Crossing."

In 1987 he announced he would die in the tree he holed up in, unless he got $3 million. I was all in favor of seeing what would happen - but some putz came along and shelled out the cash. My favorite button that year read: Oral in Heaven in '87.

[JohnyCanuck]

16. The 100ft Jesus

Didn't Oral Roberts claim he saw a vision of a 100ft Jesus calling him home unless his followers donated a certain amount of money to Oral Roberts University? Or was that some other shyster? I see Oral's son Richard is hawking an anointed prayer cloth on the TV these days to take away any aches, pains, heart disease or cancer that might be ailing you.

[RummyTheDummy]

26. Yeah, Oral had the 900 foot Jesus thing....

They did a great sketch on SNL about it years ago with Phil Hartman playing Oral.

[Generic Other]

28. Actually it was a 100 ft. Muffler Man

[Sweetpea]

19. What a name ...Oral.......he probadly never has gone downtown.