I recently happened upon a realisation. I was watching TV evangelist Benny Hinn in the wee hours of the morning, and it dawned on me that he pushes sick people over for a living. I don't know why this fitting job description/scornful remark has taken so long to come to me. I have seen plenty of arena spectacular evangelism footage, so what was it about this bout that awakened me to the practicalities of Hinn's "calling"? I think it must have been that the person he was "healing" was a boy of about 8 or 9 years of age, coupled with the fact that Benny, thinking he was on to a winner because of the child's breathless and overwhelmed thankfulness, just kept pushing him over, again, and again, and again! Now, there's something striking about the image of a robust man pushing a trembling child to the ground, repeatedly, to rapturous applause. I found it quite revealing and it pushed my scorn of the assumptions that support such a livelihood to a new level. It could have been farce, were it not so ghastly. Seriously. What prompts a man to push a sick child over, to praise the Lord, and then to briskly order his henchmen to pick the sick child up, so that he can be pushed down again, all the while expecting and receiving gratitude from the sick child's mother? How is there a market for this? Benny finished his ritual by reuniting the mother and child with a "He'll never be the same again", at which they both beamed, the boy more tremulously than the mother. I have no doubt that to this day they feel blessed by this attention, and I find it baffling. What is pleasing about this spectacle? What is heartening? Darnit. And now I have a perverse inclination to enter that weasely profession just so that I can fill out the Occupation section of arrival/departure cards with "Push sick people over-er". This, of course, will send a powerful message.

One spectacle that I was eagerly anticipating was the Eurovision Song Contest. I taped it so that I would be able to watch it with the power of rewind in order to savour again the dry witticisms of the BBC's Terry Wogan. But I have since discovered that the SBS telecast didn't feature him this year, so I don't know if I'll bother, frankly. The tape is in my VCR, ready to watch at any moment, but I have a feeling that it will be taped over unseen. Seriously, what's the point without Wogan? Gutted.