By Tim Sanders

When was the last time you were really shocked? No, this column has nothing to do with electrical outlets. I mean, how long has it been since you had that "OMIGOSH" experience where your brain was absolutely astonished by an idea you’d never entertained before? You know, like when that venerable scientist Sir Wayne Newton said, "Golly, gravity actually makes apples fall down, not up!"

I’ll admit that sometimes I am shocked my own self by what actually shocks other people. I have a cousin, for example–a seemingly normal woman in her 70s–who for some reason or other admired Liberace, and watched his television show faithfully in the 1950s. She thought he was "quite a hunk," and lusted after him passionately. When she eventually learned that he was "gay" (not in the happy, carefree sense, but in the cape-flapping, sequin-flashing, candelabra-polishing, piano-playing sense) she was crushed. No, a piano didn’t fall on her; she was crushed emotionally. This news flash apparently came as a complete surprise to her, and even today when she talks about "Lee," with that wistful, faraway look in her eyes, I am perplexed. I wonder if the announcement that a guy wearing a full feathered headdress, buckskin trousers, war paint and moccasins might just possibly be an American Indian (or at the very least one of the Village People) would cause her to fall on the floor in a fit of apoplexy.

If we had the space, we’d either make a paper hat out of this entire column, or discuss the shock and moral outrage expressed by politicians when they learn that:

a) one of their esteemed colleagues has been found doing some very unmanly things in an airport men’s room;

b) one of their friends and close advisors carries classified documents around in his pants and socks because it makes him feel "warm all under;"

c) certain people who’ve donated huge sums of cash to their campaign are headed for federal prison; or

d) there are actually crooks holding public office in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

But that would keep us up long past our bedtime, so we’ll shift gears and talk about email. We recently received several of those dire email warnings from decent, caring people who are just absolutely sure that what they’re sending is true, because ... well, because they got it in the email, and Lord knows you can’t send actual printed messages through the email unless they’re true. There are laws about stuff like that, right? This warning explained that we need to call the National Do Not Call Registry ("This is Hajib with the National Do Not Call Registry. I THOUGHT WE TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL!") immediately, or we’d go bankrupt and wind up living in a cardboard box, eating out of dumpsters. This unfortunate turn of events would befall us due to the massive amount of calls we’d be getting from telemarketers, who on a specified date would be given access to our cell phone number and would then be able to call us hundreds of times a day, just like they do on our land line phone, and we’d be charged for each call. EVEN VOICE MAIL MESSAGES! The forwarded email said we had to ACT IMMEDIATELY, and assured us that THIS IS NOT A HOAX, and used capital letters and bold type and lots and lots of exclamation points to convince us that this was very serious stuff. Now these people are generally the very same people who regularly send us emails with photos of 17 ft. rattlesnakes, or 25 ft. alligators, or tales about how wearing aluminum foil hats can protect you from harmful rays given off by satellite dishes. And when these good people learn that they’ve been hoaxed again, they are always shocked.

And then there’s Oral Roberts.

Some people are very shocked about the most recent Oral Roberts University scandal. In case you’ve forgotten about old Oral, here are a few discussion questions which come readily to mind in his case:

1. ORAL? When little Oral was born, back in 1918, did his parents give his name a lot of thought? Were they, perhaps, lying in bed, not far from his humble wooden crib which they’d covered with three attractive coats of red, lead-based paint, when the precious tyke suddenly squalled and they both looked at each other, realized which end the noise came from, and shouted "ORAL!?"

2. Or had it always been Number 1 on their list of baby names, because "Nasal" and "Glottal" just didn’t sound right, somehow.

3. At what point did little Oral discover his healing "gift?" Was he a toddler who healed livestock, did he practice on fish who’d bellied up in the family aquarium, or did he do his internship as a teenager, working diligently on poor relatives with severe sinusitis who couldn’t afford a general practitioner?

4. Is there something oxymoronic about a faith-healer needing a hospital, or was the City of Faith Medical Center in Tulsa built to treat the overflow that God, Oral, and healers with graduate degrees in head-slapping from his university couldn’t handle?

5. Did it help Oral to squint when laying hands on the sick and infirm, or was he just listening very intently for the sound of loose change in their pockets?

6. Did the current president of ORU, Oral’s son, Richard "Blinky" Roberts, inherit his father’s healing gift, or did it require a degree from the university?

7. Is Oral still seeing that 900 ft. Jesus lurking around Tulsa? Were hallucinogenics involved? Steroids?

8. Could the current crop of presidential candidates use Oral’s old 1987 fund raising strategy and promise that God will "take them home" if they don’t raise $100 million by February? Aw, c’mon, please!

9. Did Oral actually raise a child from the dead, as he claimed in the late 1980s, or was it only a comatose midget?

10. Are we really surprised that Blinky and the crew of frauds at ORU are now involved in another scandal? Would you buy a used car from these guys? Even if they told you they’d laid hands on the fuel injection system just last Sunday?

Some people who’ve studied Oral Roberts, Mt. Vesuvius, and other natural eruptions for years, people who scored really well on those discussion questions, were absolutely shocked to learn that Oral’s son Blinky and his son’s wife, Winky, may well have been skimming money from the university and living it up in Tulsa (if that’s possible) rather than seriously devoting time to healing quadriplegics, amputees, and the recently departed.

Go figure.