Last week, Dan wrote about the displaced folks in Memphis who accepted a free house from a church, did not move into it, and then sold it for a $60,000 profit. And of course this story went national in the latest round of press trying to paint New Orleanians as a bunch of lazy grifting negroes.

Anyway, my opinion all along was that these people are indeed assholes, but if the house had been donated by say, McDonalds and not a church, than nobody would give a damn. But since a poor, hapless church congregation was swindled, suddenly these people became total villians.

The church that donated the house was the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), a national evangelical pentecostal church. It is the fourth largest Christian Church in the U.S., and is headquartered in Memphis. Let’s look at another real estate deal they participated in:

1981 – COGIC receives the deed to the Stax recording studio in Memphis from Union Planters Bank for $1. For the next eight years they let this historic property fall into disrepair, and they tear it down in 1989. About a decade later, COGIC sells the land for $100,000, and the Stax Museum is built on the property.

Hmmm, karma is a bitch, huh?