Pat Robertson: watch out for demons attached to secondhand goods!

Sorry again that I’ve been so silent — gigantic things are afoot in my life at the moment and it’s all I can do to keep myself from being plowed under. I’ll tell you all about ’em as soon as I can.

Pat Robertson has some helpful advice for those of you who have to buy items from thrift stores and Goodwill (wait… buying items from Goodwill? We’re not talking about the Salvation Army perchance, are we???). That advice is — you should rebuke them all before bringing them into your household in case there are demons attached to them.

Of course, buying things directly from a retail store drastically lowers your chances of getting a stray demon. You never know what kinds of demons might manifest in that pair of shoes you picked up from the thrift store, whereas with buying directly from retail, the chances are you’re only risking exposure to Mammon. So be careful when you sell all your possessions to buy a sword — that sword might be inhabited by an emissary from Hell!

Figures that the One Percent has a lower chance of getting attacked by demons. They get all the juiciest privileges, don’t they?

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Pat Robertson: watch out for demons attached to secondhand goods!
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21 thoughts on “Pat Robertson: watch out for demons attached to secondhand goods!

  1. 1

    Don’t have much to add other than to mention that yeah, you certainly can buy things from Goodwill… they do indeed have thrift stores much like SA (although not as many, and not in every province); they apparently even have an auction site, although I think that’s just for the US.

  2. 2

    No wonder the games industry is trying to curb second hand game sales, it’s an attempt to protect us from demons! Thank you for your anti-consumer practices EA, my soul feels safe again

  3. 3

    I got a really nice fedora from a thrift shop earlier this winter. Should I yell “Out, foul demons!” at it or is there more involved in evicting demons from my second-hand headgear? I think demons are involved in male-pattern baldness because I’m becoming a victim of that malady.

  4. 4

    Meh, you just need to wash thrift shop items with that new washing powder, the one that promises nano-demon cleaning power in holy or cold water. Demons flush away with the suds.

  5. 5

    Just wash your purchases using Tide with demon lifter and your stuff will come out just fine. Either that or find a herd of goats to cast the demons into – isn’t that what they’re for?

  6. 6

    Clearly Pat has been watching the 80s TV show “Friday the 13th,” and is thinking of Lewis Vendredi’s shop. Of course we should be afraid, if we happen to be shopping there! Obviously once you start believing works of fiction are real, there’s no stopping on that road.

  7. 7

    Article: Wikipedia – Spirit Possession

    “Female workers in Malaysian factories sometimes experience spirit possession.
    […]
    [The anthropologist Aihwa Ong] argued that spirit possession is a traditional way of rebelling against authority without punishment, and suggests that the spirit possession events that took place in the factories were in fact, a means of protesting the untenable working conditions and sexual harassment that the women were compelled to endure.”

  8. 9

    (wait… buying items from Goodwill? We’re not talking about the Salvation Army perchance, are we???).

    You can buy from Goodwill too, at least in the States. They have stores just like the Salvation Army stores, although the Goodwill nearest to me seems to also have deals to take unwanted overstock from local merchants.

  9. 11

    Meh, more wackiness from lunatics. I’m more interested in your apparent confusion about Goodwill and related organizations.

    They’re businesses. Retail stores. The business model is to accept donated items and sell those rather than buy from a distributor or manufacturer. What they do with the profits that result (when one of your major costs is zero, you MUST be making some kind of profit!) differs between the various large chains. My understanding is that Salvation Army and Goodwill send the bulk of those profits to their charitable arms, while Value Village, as a more traditional retail business, sends a smaller fraction to a third-party charity.

    Are you perhaps confusing the no-money-involved act of donating items to Goodwill / Salvation Army / Value Village with the yes-money-involved act of getting items from Goodwill / SA / VV ?

  10. 12

    No — I am confusing the actual nonprofit arms of places like Red Cross which gives clothing to the needy for free, and places like Salvation Army which sell items they got for free then plow their profits into religious proselytization missions.

  11. 13

    Perhaps it’s a local colloquialism that any items donated to the Red Cross for this purpose is “given to Goodwill” and there are actual organizations in the States called Goodwill that operate by selling these items instead of giving them to the needy.

  12. 14

    Goodwill is still controversial, even without the religious mission – they hire disabled and homeless people to work at the stores, but allegedly under highly exploitative conditions.

  13. 15

    FTB should start a campaign to “Mail your old atheist demon infected sweaters to Pat”. Maybe the sheer volume of demon wool will overcome him and lure him to the dark side. Bwaa-ha-ha.

  14. 16

    We should not make fun of Robertson so readily. It is absolutely true that an original owner of any clothing will leave some trace of his or her personality or vibes in the clothes that they wear. So I would definitely not wear the clothes of a serial killer. However, I am not sure if praying over the clothes will remove those vibes though and neither will using the washing instructions.

  15. 17

    Interesting… Here in the UK, operating what we call “charity shops” (and you’d probably call “thrift stores”) is one of the major funding sources for many charities. They sell donated items, and mostly operate with volunteer staff. They’re a major fixture of every high street in the country, and fund a dizzying array of different charities – the two biggest being the British Heart Foundation (which funds research into heart disease) and Barnados (who work with vulnerable children). Some streets, they’re almost every other shop…

  16. 18

    Demons?? You have to be fucking kidding me. Demons – witches – does ol’ Pat support exorcism as a medical treatment as well?

  17. 19

    “gigantic things are afoot in my life…”

    If my skeptical senses weren’t so finely honed (hee), I would totally picture you running up and down the street being chased by Bigfoot.

    Even if I believed fervently in demons, I doubt that I would fear a demon that hung around on a hanger at Goodwill for 18 months because it was attached to an unsold sweater.

  18. 20

    I have a huge amount (well, 2500 and counting) of books, most of which came from charity shops, second-hand markets and shops, auctions, etc, plus not a few nice pieces of studio pottery from the same sources, and as yet no poltergeists or succubi have disturbed my peace.
    I call Robertson out on bullshit.

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