Once a Huckster, Always a Huckster

Pastor Ted, one ugly & vicious-looking sumbitch, in the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp.You can't keep a good man down, they say, & you sure as hell can't keep Ted Haggard down either. Persistent, non-stop assholery is a large part of the bizarre human defect that is sales, whether it's hoodwinking people w/ fairy stories, or the "insurance" scam. And so, Ted is back. 

While his exact plans remain unclear, Haggard is unmistakably making himself a public figure again, nine months after his former church said he walked away from an oversight process meant to restore him. [...] Haggard's Nov. 2 return to the pulpit was set in motion by the Rev. Chris Byrd, a college classmate from Oral Roberts University. Byrd said he first invited Haggard to speak at his church last summer to offer the Haggard family support, help them heal and teach his own flock about sin and forgiveness.

Both alums of Oral Roberts are they? How does that happen?

Byrd said he was not restoring Haggard to Christian ministry and introduced him as a businessman — hinting at a possible future speaking to churches and civic groups. "You could make a career out of your reformed fallen Christian life," said David Edward Harrell, a retired Auburn University history professor who studies charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity. "What you can't do is go back and do the same thing. Once you've lost that clientele, it's lost."

Fortunately for Pastor Ted, there's another born each minute.

[Haggard] had moved his family back to Colorado Springs and was selling life insurance at their $700,000 home down the road from New Life Church, angering some who thought he should stay away.

Life insurance! There oughta be a law.

And there should be a law about calling a "house" a "home," but that's another story, for another time.