In the Christian Science Monitor, Lisa Suhay tells us not to worry our pretty li'l heads about Pat Robertson:

Living here, just a stone's throw from Virginia Beach, and watching the chaos ensue after Pat Robertson's call for the assassination of the Venezuelan president, I feel the need to set things straight.

Not to downplay the sanctity of foreign government officials and their dislike of being an announced target, but for pity sake, it's "Old Pat."

... it was taken just a little too seriously....

In the South they call it "talking trash" - in New York it would be called "venting." Native Southerners I know view the words as garbage to be taken out of our mental houses and deposited in the bin. They know that the speaker is just tossing out the first awful thing that pops into his head without regard for reaction....

"Talkin' trash" isn't excusable, or very nice, but here in the South people turn the other cheek. They ignore it instead of making it into a federal case. Maybe they agree, maybe they don't, but trust me - nobody in Virginia Beach is in lock-and-load mode over this....

So I guess we should all be like Southerners and realize that Pat was just funnin' in 2003:

Charles Taylor, the Liberian president who has been indicted by an international court for crimes against humanity, has few remaining supporters in the United States. But one prominent American who has stuck with the West African leader is religious broadcaster and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

In recent broadcasts of his cable TV show "The 700 Club," watched by an estimated 1 million households, Robertson has defended Taylor as a fellow Baptist and Liberia's "freely elected" leader. The "horrible bloodbath" taking place in Liberia, he has repeatedly said, is the fault of the State Department.

"So we're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country. And how dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down,' " Robertson said to his viewers on Monday....

And I guess this, from 1986, was just hyperbole:

Can we turn a deaf ear to the cries for material help from those brave freedom fighters in Angola, in Afghanistan, in Mozambique, in Nicaragua, who would take to the field of battle at the risk of their own lives to bring freedom and democracy to their people?

And I guess it was just trash talk when Robertson said and did all this:

Robertson, according to investigative reporter Sara Diamond, used his tax-exempt broadcast license to hold a fundraising telethon in the United States for the Guatemalan military and the Nicaraguan contras.... Robertson also ... praised death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson of the ARENA party as a "very nice fellow." ....

Pat Robertson visited [El Salvador] in 1985 and reportedly met with President Jose Napoleon Duarte. Upon his return he noted that the political situation in the country was encouraging and attributed the improvement, at least in part, to "one of the strongest religious revivals in the world. Whenever you see that, you are not going to see communism and oppression."...

Within a week of the 1982 coup which brought evangelical Gen. Efrain Rios Montt to power, Pat Robertson flew to Guatemala to meet with the new president. Rios Montt's first interview as president was with Robertson, who aired it on "The 700 Club" and praised the new military government....

The U.S. operation of [Robertson's] CBN was considered one of the top private funders of the contras.... CBN gave the $3 million to the contra's Houston-based Nicaraguan Patriotic Association, according to Juan Sacasas, Vice President of the group and representative of the FDN contra force.... Robertson was so popular among them that one group named itself the Pat Robertson Brigade....

Come on, people! It was all a figure of speech! Can't you Yankees recognize a figure of speech when you hear one?