The oldest profession may be prostitution...

[Archae]

But the oldest con job is still very active.
Goerge Carlin was dead on.

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Peter Popoff has been preaching about God and money for decades.

His shows that he pays BET and other cable and TV channels to appear on are non-stop crusades about spirituality and overcoming addictions, but most of all, they're about helping people erase mountains of debt.

"I'm telling you that God teaches in His word that He wants to cancel, erase, wipe out, obliterate your debt," Popoff says in a video ad.

Popoff claims he has delivered miracles to hundreds of thousands of people supernaturally.

He sends his followers tons of mail, including small vials of "miracle spring water" and debt cancellation kits, then asks his viewers to send small donations. In return, Popoff promises -- as a messenger of God -- to heal and unlock the secrets of financial security and wipe out all debt.

"Fundamentally, he's just a con man," said Ole Anthony, president of Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based watchdog group that investigates fraud in religious ministries, including televangelism. "Supernatural debt cancellation or debt cancellation is just hogwash. There's no spiritual justification or biblical justification for any of the things that they do."

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/consumer&id=7984766&cmp=fb-kabc-article-7984766

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Steve Martin based his character in "Leap of Faith" on Popoff.

Even incorporated Popoff's use of an earpiece with a radio transmitter in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnXxUUjAHhk&feature=related

[BlueIris]

10. Ooooh. Good movie trivia. (LoF is one of my favorite Martin films.)

Right up there with LA Story and My Blue Heaven.

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Take a look at this. Steve Martin borrowed heavily from Popoff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BQKu0YP8Y

[JuniperLea]

2. This is what I call using the Lord's name in vain...

Popoff is a snake oil salesman of the worst kind.

[KittyWampus]

3. You are so right. Sick of Elmer Gantrys and the like.

[JuniperLea]

4. I grew up in a Fundy church...

I got better:) But I will never forget the traveling salvation tent meetings... and the slime balls who passed the plate... and the preacher who had sex with a married parishioner. This was the late 60's, long before Jim and Tammy Faye splashed unholy sex all over the tabloids and before Herbert W. Armstrong was busted for taking money from old folks on Social Security (including my great-grandmother).

I cannot stand the Elmer Gantrys of the world... I loathe them with every fiber of my being.

[KittyWampus]

5. Heh, I had a strict upbringing... but as a teen my "revival meetings" as a teen were Grateful Dead

concerts. :hippie:

[JuniperLea]

8. Blue Oyster Cult here...

And my Mom thought I'd actually joined a cult! Hilarity ensued!

I missed out on seeing Led Zeppelin, and going to California Jam when I was 16 - 17 because Mom was paranoid... so I had to make up for it with Black Sabbath and BOC... the dichotomy of my life was delicious! heh! I get her paranoia now, but jeez... Led Zeppelin! C'mon!

:headbang:

Now I go to metal shows with my kids:D And bluegrass... and folk...

[Archae]

9. I still remember Billy Hargis...

He's dead now.

But anything *HE* didn't like was "communist."

He got caught getting sexual favors from male and female parishoners, and blamed it on his "genes."

[JuniperLea]

11. It's a wonder there's not more of us who are...

The walking wounded.

That genes deal is sort of like Newt's love of country deal... ridiculous.

[TahitiNut]

6. Popoff delivering "God's message" is eerily identical to ...

... a GOP pol delivering "the people's message" ... and both seem astonishingly convenient for the messenger.

[TlalocW]

7. At the same time it's amazing to me, and I understand

How he was able to come back after James Randi exposed him on the Tonight Show those many moons ago. It still sickens me. The whole getting people's names and ailments and reading them to him via an earpiece so he could "miraculously" shout their information out and then "heal" them was the tip of the iceberg. When he was flying high and had his own printing plant, he would stage break-ins so he could show "evidence" of Satan sending people against him to keep him from getting God's word out and turn it into a plea for more donations, etc.

TlalocW