Folks, I want to remind you that the dingbat using the name Harold Camping, the one who had his fellow-dingbats in a terrible dither on May 21 about his promised End-of-the-World prophecy, has – predictably! – followed the formula adopted by those other “prophets” who have offered that very same scenario down through the ages; he now explains that Jesus Christ – see Google.com – really did “arrive spiritually” on that date, but since his capricious dad (and The Donald and I wanna see the birth certificate, please!) decided to spare all life on Earth the promised five terrible months of earthquakes, hurricanes, rain, even higher gas prices and continued Schwarzenegger bulletins, the world will still be ending on October 21.

No surprise. Camping may be mildly amused at the huge number of naifs who opted to swallow this ridiculous claim of his, those who spent all their savings and pension checks to finance his madness, but he has pressed the “rationalize” key on his computer, and for the next 149 days, he’ll enjoy more media notoriety, and donations will continue to arrive from those who are still willing to troop to the abattoir singing…

Camping’s website has now been carefully edited to remove references to what appears – to us – to be a failed Judgment Day prediction, but it will surely re-direct its attention – and what attention the sheep can manage to summon up – to every fire, storm, natural disaster, traffic jam, or scandal that occurs up to and including October 21, as proof of the postponed End. And when Saturday, October 22 arrives, new rationalizing will be successfully invoked, the donations will continue, and Bibles will be just as enthusiastically thumped.

The public just won’t learn. Back in 1994, Camping had predicted The End, and that failure was promptly forgotten by the media. They took a second bite this year… And this is hardly the first time a preacher has survived a total, dismal, resounding exposure. Not long after we revealed “Reverend” Peter Popoff as a fake on the NBC Tonight Show in 1986, Johnny Carson retired, and he would call me every few weeks to marvel at the fact that the TV evangelist was still working the same old scam, though on different channels. John couldn’t believe that the definitive exposé we’d offered to the public and the media had not been more effective, though I wasn’t at all surprised.  In fact, just two years ago Popoff brought in one million dollars more than he’d received the same year that we showed his methods…! These people are the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks of our present world…

The latest duck marching in that parade is Harold Camping…