Jerry Falwell (1933-2007)

by: Jurassicpork

I had a student ask me, "Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?" Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed. - The Reverend Jerry Falwell



No doubt Hillary Clinton will be breathing a sigh of relief while John McCain has been cut adrift from a major wing of Crazy Base World. The Devil’s problems, however, will be just beginning since God will obviously be foisting him off on his former archangel just for old time's sake.

Jerry Falwell collapsed in his office this afternoon and soon thereafter died, possibly of a heart attack. I wish that I could be respectful of Falwell, to not verbally molest the dead. However, that’s not what you’re hoping to read, is it? And, after all the nuclear-tipped potshots that I’ve taken at Falwell over the years, don’t you think that would be a teensy weensy bit hypocritical?

So I’ll shelve the sackcloth and ashes for the infamous televangelist who’d founded the Moral Majority, the well-dressed snake handlers who’d slithered their way into Reagan’s White House and helped establish the foundation for the Christopathic movement we see running the government today.
How many of us can forget the ventriloquist act (with two dummies instead of an actual human in the act) on The 700 Club in which Falwell blamed pro-choice people, the ACLU, gays and lesbians for September 11th? There’s Falwell’s legacy in a nutshell among those of us who don’t give ourselves prostate exams with our noses. That was just one of the many, many faux pas that led to Falwell’s fall from being America’s #1 evangelist to another potbellied Christopath relegated to genteel but still-lucrative obscurity.

Falwell, as with Robertson, as with Franklin Graham, as with James “Last of the Dogbeaters” Dobson, as with so many others, was all about hate. Maybe he wasn’t quite as outer fringe as Fred Phelps but at his worst he wasn’t very far from it. As far back as the height of his power in the late 80’s, he became such an embarrassment to moderate Christians and conservatives that even warhawk Barry Goldwater publicly said that he’d love to kick Falwell in the nuts.

Falwell made quite a handsome living baiting gays, lesbians, the ACLU, liberals and even Christians who didn’t come around the Baptist buffet line a second time for a heapin’ helping of salvation. Falwell was also a misogynist who’d said, “Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.”

I could spend all day digging up outrageous quotes of Falwell’s that would get most liberals drawn and quartered live on The 700 Club because, frankly, finding normal quotes by Falwell that don’t involve eternal damnation are scarcer than college Republicans in Iraq. But that would be a waste of time.

Instead, my peroration will be about the dangers of falling for bloated snake charmers like Falwell, someone who spoke in tongues that only other Muslim-hating, racist misogynists could possibly understand, a dog whistle language that appealed to anyone who had the English-Christopath dictionary that seems to have supplanted the Gideon Bible in American motel rooms.

People like Falwell who blithely dismiss the deaths of 3000 innocent people on September 11th, who claim that the blood of Christ can absolve you of all your sins but that you must be killed, anyway, someone who responded to contrary opinions with death threats and hatred, people such as this are only as powerful as the number of feeble-minded, tear-streaked yahoos who riotously fling money at them.

You created people like Jerry Falwell, America, just as the Germans created Hitler, just as the Russians created Lenin and Stalin, just as we had created and enabled to unforgivable degrees people like George W. Bush. Jerry Falwell is the price we pay for complacence, for tolerance of hatred and its intolerance and for outsourcing our brains and letting them be supplanted by avaricious maniacs that make up the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family.

And, if God is as intolerant as Jerry Falwell was, then Hell just got a lot fuller. Have a nice trip, Jerry and don’t forget to pack your asbestos undies.

(Here are some other touching tributes to Falwell that you can chew on until tonight’s Republican GOP presidential debate, during which time you can be sure that Reagan will be thrown under the bus so they can score brownie points with the fundies by eulogizing Falwell.

Wonkete
Wonkette again
The Carpetbagger Report
Digby
God Is 4 Suckers

Crossposted at Welcome to Pottersville.)