Marcus Lamb, a conservative TV preacher whose network offered a constant stream of Covid misinformation to its viewers, died earlier this week of Covid.
Jonathan Lamb described his father's Covid infection as "a spiritual attack from the enemy" to "take down" Marcus Lamb. The network has dedicated hours of broadcasts to anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination activists and groups. In July 2020, the Lamb family devoted an hour of their broadcast to "censorship" around the Covid pandemic, featuring the misinformation group America's Frontline Doctors.
Lamb was lately in the news when Inside Edition ran an expose on his lavish lifestyle and a jet acquired while receiving nearly $4m in pandemic loans from the U.S. government. Little-mentioned in the coverage is that Lamb was a "prosperity theologian". Every message and every moment was built from the ground up to part people from their money. The way his TV network glommed onto Covid misinfo is a reminder of how apocalyptically engaged conservative audiences are with it. It's like a leaking gasoline pipeline: how much can they bottle before it blows?
