Remember Tony Alamo?

I've let the blog lie fallow for several days, I know. I've been involved in — uh — other things, about which I will talk here as soon as I can. As it's been several days, I thought what better subject to discuss in getting back in the swing of things than Tony Alamo (pronounced A-lah-mo, apparently).

You may not have heard of this guy, but in Austin we're fairly familiar with his antics. Every once in a while you'll walk out of the supermarket to find that the windshield wipers of every car in the parking lot are clutching copies of Alamo's trashy four-color newsletter, dutifully distributed by his followers, who seem indifferent to the amount of litter they are creating when the majority of them are simply chucked aside by exasperated shoppers. On more than one occasion, I've cleared out an entire lot of Alamo newsletters and recycled them. I had an angry confrontation with a couple of Alamo's clods while doing this several years ago, the upshot of which was that I, evidently, was the "nut," despite the fact they were ones belonging to a cult run by a convicted felon.

Oh yes, Alamo has an impressive rap sheet. Like Kent Hovind, he failed to report his ministry's payroll taxes, which cost him a six year stretch. His church runs a bogus charity that was caught red-handed selling donated goods for profit on eBay. He's an avowed polygamist, who's been accused any number of times of child abuse (both sexual and otherwise). He has a hate-on for the Catholics second only to Jack Chick's, which has led to the SPLC classifying his church as a hate group. And finally, he's just plain batshit insane. After his wife died in 1982, he kept her body on display at his compound for six months, telling his followers she'd be resurrected. (What resulted from that is nearly too bizarre for words.)

Through all of this, the bastard has managed to keep preaching, keep a following, keep scamming money, and, reportedly, keep fucking little girls. Is there anything a truly evil person cannot manage to pull off, even with the law on his tail half his life, as long as he attaches the label "religion" to it?

Well, Alamo's reign of error may be puttering to a close. Early today the feds raided Alamo's compound in Arkansas, as part of a child porn investigation. No one has been arrested yet, but it is expected that a warrant for Alamo is forthcoming. Alamo displayed his usual paranoiac class when interviewed about the raid: "Where do these allegations stem from? The anti-Christ government. The Catholics don't like me because I have cut their congregation in half. They hate true Christianity." Whatever. Tell it to Bubba while he's making you felch him in the showers, you dirty old man you.

So, another crazy bites the dust once and for all, we can only hope. At the very least, hopefully we won't have to deal with cleaning up any more of those stupid newsletters off the pavement.