"Regarding comments attributed to me in the Los Angeles Times - allegedly made on a bus trip from Germany to Holland in 1998 - I emphatically denounce such comments as false"
About this Quote
A denial like this is less about clearing the record than controlling the frame. Paul Crouch doesn’t rebut the substance head-on; he builds a scaffolding of distance: “attributed to me,” “allegedly,” a specific newspaper name, an oddly precise travel vignette (“a bus trip from Germany to Holland in 1998”). The details function as insulation. By locating the supposed remarks in a cramped, foreign, long-ago setting, he suggests unreliability without having to argue it: mishearing, mistranslation, bad notes, a hostile press, a story passed along until it hardened into “fact.”
“Emphatically denounce” is courtroom language with revival-tent volume. For a televangelist figure, outrage becomes a credential: indignation reads as innocence to supporters primed to see secular media as adversarial. Notice what’s missing: there’s no alternative account, no “here’s what I actually said,” no invitation to examine evidence. The sentence is engineered to be repeated as a clean sound bite, a portable shield congregants can cite without reopening the scandal.
The subtext is reputational triage. Clergy-public figures trade on moral authority, so the charge isn’t merely that he misspoke; it’s that he is the kind of person who would. By declaring the comments “false,” he isn’t just disputing a quote. He’s asserting that his identity is incompatible with the allegation. The intent is to halt the spread, rally the faithful, and recast the episode as persecution rather than accountability.
“Emphatically denounce” is courtroom language with revival-tent volume. For a televangelist figure, outrage becomes a credential: indignation reads as innocence to supporters primed to see secular media as adversarial. Notice what’s missing: there’s no alternative account, no “here’s what I actually said,” no invitation to examine evidence. The sentence is engineered to be repeated as a clean sound bite, a portable shield congregants can cite without reopening the scandal.
The subtext is reputational triage. Clergy-public figures trade on moral authority, so the charge isn’t merely that he misspoke; it’s that he is the kind of person who would. By declaring the comments “false,” he isn’t just disputing a quote. He’s asserting that his identity is incompatible with the allegation. The intent is to halt the spread, rally the faithful, and recast the episode as persecution rather than accountability.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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