charles roark

Chris Knight's avatar

Ten years ago this summer I packed up my car with the bare essentials and my dog Tammy and I left our hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina.  I didn’t know where we were going.  We were headed toward literally only God knew where.

We spent the better part of an entire year crossing America, looking for a new place to call home.  When we got to California I decided that we had gone as far from our old home as we could, so I spent a few months looking for work there.  That didn’t happen.

I didn’t want to go back to Reidsville a failure, but that’s pretty much what happened.  And I was there for a couple of months while I tried to figure out what my next course of action should be. That didn’t go so well.  Concerned friends came up with a plan: to let Tammy and ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Maybe I’m about to say too much, with this post.  But a few of you have asked me about recent events and my take on them.  And this does pertain to some people who I had blogged about much (though it’s been awhile, like fifteen years or so).

I feel obligated, for sake of completion, to weigh in on the matter.  So here it goes…

As reported a few days ago, Johnny Robertson of the Martinsville Church of Christ died a week ago.  The funeral service was held this past weekend.  Robertson was cremated, which may or may not be germane to the conversation.

The manner of Robertson’s death has become a topic of considerable discussion in the Martinsville, Virginia and Reidsville, North Carolina area.  I am aware of what the medical examination determined.  By now many people have correctly surmised how Johnny Robertson came to pass away.  Regardless ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It is by faith alone that we please God. It’s just the conceited bastitches among mankind who keep insisting that we must please them with our works.

(Can’t think of a better way to preface this post than with that thought from earlier this week.)

Yes folks, it’s time to once again chronicle for posterity – in addition to laughing at – what is called on this blog and others the “Church Of Christ In Name Only” (COCINO) and the minions of Johnny Robertson.

A few nights ago numerous e-mails came in saying that I should check out what local cult leader Johnny Robertson – prime evil of the self-professed “Church of Christ” wacko fringe group – had brought in: some guy from the cult’s breeding ground in Texas, not just for the group’s annual “tent meeting” in this area but also, apparently, for the express purpose of “taking on ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

To: Charles Roark, general manager of WGSR Star 47

I have significantly more substantiation for my report than you had when you allowed your biggest-paying client to accuse First Christian Church in Kernersville of child pornography without challenging him on it, or when you personally claimed on live television that the same church was “full of perverts”.

sincerely,
Chris Knight...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

So a fairly well-known company was considering locating a facility in Rockingham County that would have put around sixty people to work in positions with good pay.

And then some of their management happened to catch a few days’ worth of WGSR Star 47. In particular The Local Buzz with WGSR general manager Charles Roark. Even more particular: a number of recent broadcasts in which Roark was encouraging viewers to talk about their sex lives.

It gave this area a bad enough impression, that those jobs aren’t coming now.

I’ve been sitting on this for a few weeks but didn’t have enough confirmation of it until this afternoon. One source told me that WGSR’s being the sole televised media outlet for the county made us “out to be slackjawed idiots”.

Call it a classic case of one bad apple ruining the whole bushel.

By the way, ever notice how Roark ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

This blog hasn’t had much to report on local cult leader/pathological liar/convicted felon/public menace Johnny Robertson lately. Been almost a month since I posted anything new.

This next item though is sufficiently wacky enough that it screams to be talked about.

Some people have been writing to let me know that Johnny Robertson and all of his followers (those being James Oldfield, Micah Robertson “The Lesser” and Mark McMinnis) have been conspicuously absent from the airwaves of local television station WGSR in recent weeks. Instead What Does the Bible Say? and A Word from the Lord (AKA “The Martinsville Taliban Show” and “A Word from James Oldfield”) have been in reruns, one of which was Oldfield’s two-hour spiel about why it’s a sin to place money in the Salvation Army kettles. That particular screed prompted one person known to this writer to make a fifty dollar contribution to the Salvation ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

This has to be one of the most ridiculous broadcasts I’ve ever seen coming out of Johnny Robertson and the “Church of Christ in Name Only”. And that’s sayin’ something…

He started at 10 p.m. tonight on the program out of WGSR’s Martinsville studio, ranting about Bob Lawson (several e-mails came in today saying that Lawson pitched my blog during Charles Roark’s The Local Buzz earlier this afternoon and that neither Roark or Robertson like that at all).

After that, Robertson commenced to launching an on-air crusade against, for some reason or another, a steakhouse.

And now several times in the past few minutes Robertson has insinuated that this might be the end of him on WGSR. It was like watching Oral Roberts back in 1987, when Roberts told his viewers to send him millions of dollars or else “the Lord will call me home”. Tonight Robertson announced several...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Odd things are afoot regarding local cult leader Johnny Robertson and the “Church of Christ in Name Only”.

Numerous e-mails came in Tuesday evening about that day’s edition of The Local Buzz on WGSR. The entire last half-hour of the show consisted of honked-off viewers calling out general manager Charles Roark on his blatant pro-Robertson bias. And one Internet forum devoted to Henry County, Virginia issues – which Johnny Robertson had publicly boasted of being “the number one topic of discussion” – has in recent days become loaded with anti-Robertson animosity. Some of which is coming from people claiming to be former members of the cult.

Without knowing anything else about what’s going down across the state line, it certainly does seem as though the people of Martinsville and Henry County, for whatever reason, are on the warpath like never before against the “Church of Christ” cult.

But here’s ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Say what one might about Bob Lawson, to the very best of my knowledge there was only one person in that “debate” on WGSR this past Tuesday night who has lied boldly and publicly when he accused not one but two churches, with no evidence whatsoever, of what can only be called child pornography.

And Bob Lawson wasn’t that person.

More than a few people have told me that Johnny Robertson is “scum”, “a dirty-minded individual”, “a sick man”, “a complete bastard”, and numerous other epithets that I won’t share here for sake of polity, for making those unfounded accusations against First Christian Church in Kernersville and Osborne Baptist Church in Danville. Interestingly, Robertson hasn’t dared bring those accusations up any more since they have been chronicled by this and other bloggers in the area.

Based on the footage I have seen from Tuesday night’s “debate” and now tonight, Robertson ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

In the past month or so WGSR general manager Charles Roark has broadcast footage of no less than three murder victims (before knowing if the next of kin had been notified), and at this moment is defending his “right” to trespass on property and film video of a person’s house burning down without regard of what the guy’s family was going through. In addition to every other amount of callous disrespect toward others that WGSR under his management has done with no editorial oversight.

So I’m compelled to ask aloud…

If the naked, beaten and dead body of Azile Roark was lying in the street, would Charles Roark be equally insistent on footage of that – the corpse of his own mother and the proprietor of Star News Corporation – be broadcast on television?

Or is there a double standard at work at WGSR?

We already know that Roark ...

Read more