This is really sick.

Michael Guglielmucci was one of those fundamentalist evangelists. His territory was Australia where he was an Assemblies of God minister. In this video of him you will see him getting all emotional with an oxygen tube sticking into his nose.

The reason he gave for the oxygen tube is that he had terminal cancer. He had this terminal cancer for the last two years. He wrote a song about how Jesus could heal him, called Healer. The problem is that it was all a lie. Guglielmucci never had cancer. He didn't need an oxygen tube. Gugliemucci went so far as forcing himself to vomit and apparently pulling out his own hair. His own wife was fooled and quit her job to care for him. Guglielmucci went so far as to fake emails from medical authorites which he shared with family and friends.

I'm not particularly shocked by the fraud. Such things are pretty common in Mr. Guglielmucci's profession.

Of course, Rev. Guglielmucci has an excuse as to why all this happened: it's the fault of porn. He goes so far as to claim he is addicted to porn and has been for 16 years. Sure, that's it. Why is it that these people immediatley come up with excuses like this.

In the video you see Guglielmucci getting all emotional begging for forgiveness, on the verge of tears. But notice how he pulls the same emotional stunt on stage when he speaks about his illness. From what I saw, he spent much of his time in the interview acting emotionally distressed, even wiping away tears. Guglielmucci says that the porn was making him physically sick and that he invented the cancer lie to cover up the reasons that he was losing his hair and vomiting. Now this is about as legitimate a claim as the cancer claim. He backs it up with the same crying and quivering voice.

I read a story yesterday about Rupert Everett, the actor, who is on Broadway in Noel Coward's Blythe Spirit. In preparation for his role, Everett goes and meets a self-proclaimed psychic who claims she got some sort of reading from the bed that Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe used. She claims that just touching the bed caused her to burst into tears because of the strong connection she psychically felt. Everett's response was: "Bursting into tears is the easiest thing in the book, actually."

When Jimmy Swaggart got caught humping hookers in his spare time he had a similar tearful confession. It was the same acting technique he used in his sermons where he turned the tears on and off as needed. For a satirical look at the Swaggart episode and his tearful confessions view this old skit with the Church Lady.


For an example of how these "evangelists" pull this tear stunt on a regular basis here is Swaggart in one of his sermons using this routine.



The amazing thing about these con men is that they put on acts when on stage, or in the pulpit, and then when it all falls apart they insist they aren't acting and then pull the same routine in their confession. In addition, they avoid taking responsibility for what they do. Guglielmucci blamed the whole thing on porn. Ted Haggard came up with the claim that he was molested as a kid by an unnamed friend of his father's. When Rep. Foley was caught coming on to Congressional pages he blamed it on an unnamed priest molesting him as a boy.

Since "addiction" to porn is a rather meaningless phrase, the excuse is great. Ditto for the claims about molestation. No one saw these molestations. No one was convicted. No evidence exists. It is the easiest claim in the world to make. Demanding some evidence for such claims simply brings on attacks from the abuse industry who demand that the "victims" be believed no matter how unbelievable the claims, no matter how often they are found to be lying.

And while these kind preach about morality with a rather sickening regularity, when they get caught not living up to their own sermons they immediately look for a scapegoat to blame. You never get a confession saying: "Yea, I lied. I did it because I liked the attention." Or, "Sure I had an affair, it felt good. I like sex so I did it." Instead of taking personal responsibility, they want to blame porn, drugs, depression, the Devil, molestation and so forth. The blame lies outside themselves. Previously I spoke of "weasel apologies", this is similar, this a weasel confession. It is a confession where a "sinner admits he has sinned without taking responsibility for his sin."