Once again, Joel and Victoria Osteen have entered the lion’s den, the vicious place where only the brave come out unscathed — The Larry King Show.
As difficult as it may be to believe, they had some merchandise to hawk Monday night. In this case, a new book by Victoria.
Under the relentless questioning of King, we learned that a) the pair will host the first-ever non-baseball event in the new Yankee Stadium, a “Night of Prayer” in April; and b) Victoria has the most frozen “smile” seen outside of Nicole Kidman enduring a red-carpet interview.
Some highlights: An e-mailed question from a viewer asked if the Osteens “fly in a private jet or by commercial carrier? Do you travel first class?”
The answer, from Joel: “We travel all different ways — it just depends on what we’re doing. If we do some events on Sunday nights after the services, we’ll take a charter jet, but then there’ll be times we just travel normal like everybody else.”
(Editor’s note: “Like everybody else,” we’re guessing, means “Like everybody else in first class.”)
King later asked Victoria about “the incident”; when he said it was perhaps “the price of celebrity” she went into ultra-frozen smile mode and said “I don’t know.”
Asked about gay marriage, the Osteens tap-dances as they always have (gays have money too, you know).
“I just don’t think that’s God’s best,” Joel said.
Asked if being gay was a choice, he said it definitely was.
“I do think it’s a choice. I can’t say I undertannd it all,” he said, “I believe that it’s a choice.”
Victoria added that they do have gay people in their congregation. “And they’re wonderful people, they’re very nice people,” she said. “It’s just that we don’t believe in that.”
— Richard Connelly
This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2008.