When I posted the amazing filthy preacher from public access TV the other day, I totally forgot to give props to the man who blazed this particular trail: the late, great Dr. Gene Scott.
Here's the good doctor on the attack, throwing out every rule in the televangelist / NPR fundraising handbook, frothing at the mouth and insulting his viewers, one of whom Scott challenges to a duel: [download video, 9 megs, mpeg format]
I love how he even denies that he's cursing. They don't make 'em like Gene Scott anymore. In the middle of his 30-year career, the FCC stripped Scott of 15 million dollars worth of broadcast stations. His response was to form the FCC Monkey band, a clip of which you can download on this post by The Professor, along with more info and video links to the mad doctor.
You can still talk to Gene Scott at his website. He died last year, but minor details like that never shut him up before.
And, as I'm sure The Professor would be able to tell you, you can hear the good Doctor non stop 24 hours a day on even the cheapest shortwave radio throughout the western hemisphere. Death hasn't slowed him down in the slightest (although if the occasional rants by his widow on the broadcasts are evidence, it has slowed down the flood of cash into The University Network....)
Posted by: ralph | April 27, 2006 at 11:27 PM
I find this post quite funny. I am a Dr Gene Scott fan. I have been obsessed with his program since I remember getting our first TV as a child. The good Dr. always fascinated and scared me at the same time (like most religious fanatics & relics do, oh... like a picture of John the Baptist holding his own severed head while wearing a hair suit; probably made from human hair to add to the absurdity of it all). You gotta love the Orthodox way.
Anyway as I got older and less wise, I would watch his program with another friend of mine that thought that the hours between 11 p.m. and 3 am were the most productive hours of the day - the time his show came on in my area at the time. I tried to call his show a number of times just for shits and giggles, but not once did a person ever pick up the phone. Maybe they knew we were crazed pranksters, the Dr. knows many things. Having no one ever answer the phone led me to develop a theory about Dr. Scott - that he has been dead since 1976 and the same tapes are just playing over and over on a perpetual loop. Have you ever noticed that his glasses and wardrobe seem a bit dated?
However, I am happy to hear that his "organization" finally admitted to his death - even though I doubt it happened last year. Now that he is officially dead, I may have better luck getting in touch with him.
Since we are talking about men of faith, I once heard my priest say in the middle of his sermon that "we should not tolerate tolerance" (exact quote, and he said it more than once) to the congregation after the liturgy and during his freeform WFMU kind of time. You gotta love the way some folks interpret Jesus's message of love, forgiveness, and kindness towards all.
Oh by the way, I am willing to debate any of you fuckers over the fucking bible any fucking day - ladi-fucking-da.
Posted by: Jose Mamasita | April 28, 2006 at 01:05 AM
I miss his horse montage footage. How did Hollywood skip him for Scientology anyway?
Posted by: sid bators | April 28, 2006 at 01:23 AM
I miss his long, drawn out glares at the various cameras. Glare silently at camera one, next glare at camera three, one and back to two etc. Mind control via cathode rays.
Posted by: Krys O. | April 28, 2006 at 11:02 AM
I grew up in Hartford, CT. WHCT channel 18 was his from an early time. In college he was one of our favorite late nite watches.
Posted by: TOM | April 28, 2006 at 12:43 PM
Werner Herzog did a documentary about Gene Scott back in 1980 called "God's Angry Man". It was one of a series of Herzog docs for German TV about weird American folk-culture. He also did a portrait of a gospel choir in Harlem and a profile of tobacco auctioneers in the South entitled "How Much Wood Could a Wood Chuck Chuck." If only Herzog had been able to organize a theology debate between Gene Scott and Klaus Kinski. That would have been something.
Posted by: Listener Sharon | April 28, 2006 at 02:37 PM
Kinsky would've opened up a can o' whupass on Dr. Gene. Klaus was kinetic while Dr. Gene was static.
Posted by: Krys O. | April 28, 2006 at 03:42 PM
Gene Scott was the shit! I'd get stoned out of my skull with my friends while watching the good Doctor. After a few joints, ol' Gene started to make sense! Loved his theme song "I don't like it, and God don't like it too". Pretty ballsy how Gene elevated himself above God, and made God his 1st officer. They need to put his old shows on DVD.
Useless factoid: Ron Carey (Carl Levitt from "Barney Miller", y'know, the short shit plainclothesman that tried too hard) is a staunch supporter of Dr. Gene. That sure beats the coolness factor of any celeb scientologist.
Posted by: hutter | April 29, 2006 at 01:56 PM
Gene " yeah they BUCK naked I tell you, BUCK nakid!! ". adam and eve story.
Posted by: Dave Z | May 05, 2006 at 04:35 PM
Dr. Gene was something else. Some certainly missed the whole point of what he was doing but then again that isn't abnormal. So many think themselves so intelligent yet profess profound faith in government and bureaucracy proving their own mental feebleness. They think they are by definition more intelligent for what they don't believe in.
I love the Doc because he had a quality that today is lost on those who expect watered-down kiss assing before they will believe in Jesus. Dr. Scott brought a depth and a reality to the biblical word that one seldom finds in the best of mainstream evangelicals. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that reality and have the pretty tapestry of our religious fantasies ripped to shreds so we can experience the awe of the real God who is not indifferent and who is sovereign rather than a fictional character who we often define in our own image.
Dr. Scott presented the prophets, apostles and Jesus as powerful credible individuals with authority. I have no doubt that Doc is in good company.
Posted by: Maelstorm | May 24, 2006 at 01:53 AM
Wow! What a blast from the past. I recall watching this guy late night with friends in my dorm room in Rochester NY back in the mid 80's smoking pot and laughing our asses off. I thought the guy was a complete fraud and couldn't possibly be real. Stoned, we called the guy one night, under the name "Eddie Hendricks" (that was after getting hung up on after using the name "Jimi Hendrix"). Eddie pledged $ and became a "King's House" member. Eddie's rap was he was a poor man watching Scott at the shelter and pledging the few pennies he had. Scott's people gladly accepted whatever pledge Eddie came up with. The real highlight was when we got actually mail from Scott in my college mailbox. Of course, it was all designed to extract $$$, none of which Eddie could ever seem to send in!
Posted by: Eddie Hendricks | July 21, 2006 at 12:34 AM
I really like the Doc's website which states:
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Attention: Dr. Scott does not receive e-Mail. If you want to get a message to Dr. Scott, you'll have to get in line.
You can call and leave a message by calling the Voice of Faith lines or writing him a letter!
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(Not sure I really want to get in that "line" to contact the good Dr. As for writing him a letter, gotta love that!
Posted by: Eddie Hendricks | July 21, 2006 at 01:04 AM
I started watching Dr Scott 3 years ago. I never knew he was out there. I was just coming out of a cult calle dThe Seventh Day Adventist Church. Dr. Scott re-afirmed to me that salvation is by faith only,not by any works at all. Something that the Adventist are abhorred to accept.
Dr. Scott Saved my life!!! Even if he was an old cuss, he was right about salvation by faith, all the other crap was just a gimmick to get people to watch.
Posted by: Steven | November 05, 2006 at 02:21 PM
I first saw Scott in the DFW area in the early to mid 80's. I thought then he was "really out of it" that he looked and acted like he had a lot of drugs on board.His show (?) is back in the DFW area again, but now the sucker is daid! I see he has a sweet thang that is/was a pornstar for a wife. I was interested in listening to her untill she sang a gospel song to a bump and grind strip song!I was amazed and wanted to find out more.I am a Christian and am appalled by these people.How can people be taken in by people like them, Charles Manson, Hitler?
Posted by: cms | December 22, 2006 at 01:43 AM
The only preacher I ever heard lay out the Good News as it should be laid out. Those of us who prefer logic to magic will miss him.
Posted by: Paul Cowan | January 07, 2007 at 12:37 PM
I grew up with Dr. Gene, in a sense. He owned a TV station in Hartford, one of apparently only two he owned at the time(I remember during one never-ending fund drive he had a map of the US with pins representing donations-- L.A. and CT. were completely buried under a mound of pins). We always used to be switching channels in the late 70's/early 80's, "Let's see, PBS, CBS, NBC, ABC. . . and 'that guy' again"-- the only independent TV station in the area at the time. It seemed he always had a different hat on whenever we tuned in, and for a while I fantasized about going to L.A. to try and join his band (who could be pretty rockin' at times). I wish I had a tape of one long series where he talked about the pyramids and stonehenge, and how they were somehow related (I believe you can buy the tapes from his organization still, but I'm a cheap bastard.) I too got his junk mail for a time-- I used to cut and paste the newsletters into unintelligble weirdness, photocopy them and hand them out.
It seems the "late night stoned favorite" is a common description among Dr. Gene fans.
Posted by: illlich | March 20, 2007 at 11:13 AM
I like listening to Dr. Scott when he's teaching. When he's ranting, my eyebrows raise, my mouth opens and I don't know what to think. If I don't send money and become a Kings House tither...should I not listen anymore? Jesus and His disciples didn't do this, at least I don't think they did? However, the Lord was pretty strict with the stiffnecked people in Sinai. He actually killed a bunch of them - thousands that didn't do what he asked Moses to tell them to do. God denied access to the promised land to that whole generation. Sound like Dr. Scott? Then I remember reading in John that Jesus made a whip of chords and drove out the cattloe, sheep, birds, merchants and money changers in the Temple. Is Dr. Scott allowed to show his displeasure when people challenge his motives and his ministry? God never allowed His chosen to go whoreing after other idols or question His authority. When they did, He made desolate (took back) what He gave them, and took them into captivity. Dr. Scott tells the truth that other ministires won't. He has a temper, he is a jeolous pastor. Well, so be it, God is a jeolous God. I place no judgement on the man.
Dianne
Posted by: Dianne_ Mar | July 07, 2007 at 05:21 PM
Dr. Scott conveyed a message so profound that the wise do not hear it. The message is encapsulated in the idea of making a verb out of the word 'faith', so the OT advice that the just shall live by faith means the just shall live by exercising faith in the promises of God. Dr. Scott illustrated this truth spelled out in the lives of such men as Abraham, Kaleb, Joseph, David, etc. Jesus taught the lesson to His disciples though they didn't get it until He rose from the grave because He was faithing. Finally they illustrated faithing with the lives they lived following Pentecost.
Dr. Gene Scott had the Holy Spirit gift of teaching. His successor is also the same way blessed as evidenced by her teaching every week. Pastoring/teaching a church of human beings is the gift God gives to the stiffneck and prone-to-wandering people. Some where/when many are going to get a real shock at whom The God Of Creation has ushered into His rest to reign with Him. Here's a hint: the just shall live by faithing in His Holy Spirit indwelling.
Posted by: MHGinTN | August 10, 2007 at 09:31 PM
During the 1980's Dr. Scott would play several different songs in between his teachings.
In addition to "I Want To Know" there was another song that he would play called either " We Got To Find Our Way" or "We Got To Fight Our Way".
Does anyone know who recorded this particular song and also if it is available anywhere?
Dave
Posted by: Dave Stuhrling | September 12, 2007 at 02:37 AM
I was one of the first congrageants to signe the mandate ordering
DrScott not to give the FCC one jot or tittle of any kind to the
FCC or To the ATTY GEN. Evil Older lol.
Posted by: Myron Steven Kent | October 31, 2007 at 05:29 PM
i thank god for dr scott. he taught that it was alright to be a pastor and when some idiot disrespects you tell them off and if necessary cuss them out. i was just starting in this city and when i cussed a person out he cried to others and the few people i had left. i will start again but i will not change. you have to stand up for that which is right.god doesnot want wimps. i will love you and teach you gods word but on gods terms not yours. thank you dr. scott.
Posted by: pastor richard genereux | January 08, 2008 at 03:15 PM
..........You can joke , poke fun and berate Doc all you want, but it won't change the fact that he was the most learned and knowledgeable teacher of the bible that ever stepped into a pulpit. Most people who claim to be a Christian , have no idea who GOD really is or what He said in the Old and New Testament. If you don't know your bible, folks, how can you judge Scott?
Posted by: | March 21, 2008 at 01:23 PM
http://xxxchurch.com/blogs/interns/pornmobilecontroversythevideo.html
wonder what dr Scott would think of this church,,,its supported by 700 club
Posted by: michael | July 21, 2008 at 07:42 PM
http://xxxchurch.com/blogs/interns/pornmobilecontroversythevideo.html
wonder what dr Scott would think of this church,,,its supported by 700 club
Posted by: michael | July 21, 2008 at 07:43 PM
I was a late chicken. I got turned on to Dr. Scott back in 2005 right before he died by my boyfriend, who is an avid fan. We spent many evenings lying on the couches just listening to his sermons on shortwave! I for one valued everything he taught about and have learned vast amounts of knowledge about early Summerians, The Great Pyramid, etc... I have obtained many of the books he would read from, and since then have a Enornmous Mp3 collection of his complete teachings. 2 gigs worth! I have spend $$ and a lot of time collecting these priceless teachings in their entireity. For someday I can pass this knowledge along to my children before its lost in time. I can honestly say that I am a more aware, and smater person who's understanding of God's word is now crystal clear, when before I have had trouble just reading the bible. He puts it all into perspective! God Bless the Late Dr. Gene Scott.
Posted by: Gretchen | July 28, 2008 at 01:56 AM