Falwell's
Legacy
By John Chuckman
16 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
That
great bulk, Jerry Falwell, has eaten his last family-size bucket of
Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Yes, Jerry has ordered his
last tent-sized silk suit, taken his last bag of cash from lonely old
ladies, and ordered his last truckload of cheap, merchandising Bibles
with his picture stamped on the cover. Gone on to his reward, as they
say.
He donated his organs, the
only gesture of kindness recorded in his adult life, but they were all
rejected, except for the spleen, reportedly large enough to serve three.
The following piece, written
some years ago still aptly summarizes his legacy.
October 18, 2002
JABBA APOLOGIZES
John Chuckman
The Reverend Jerry Falwell
has apologized again. It is his third-favorite occupation.
His first, as we all know,
is using national television to promote the kind of intolerance and
ignorance long associated with sweltery, fly-blown corners of America's
South. It's a profitable business by the looks of Falwell's cascading
jowls and tailored, tent-size suits. He generally doesn't apologize
for these activities, whether it is his retailing of video-tapes sensationalizing
the pitiful suicide of a member of President Clinton's staff, or his
spending countless hours blubbering from the pulpit against the lives
of people who happen to be gay.
He once alerted the nation
to dangerous hidden tendencies he discovered in a British television
show for children, a harmless piece of fluff called Teletubbies. Falwell
gravely warned America that one of the tubbies was promoting homosexuality.
Being a hate-entrepreneur
or appealing to the worst instincts of nitwits is not an unusual occupation
in America. There are many people who make handsome livings much the
way Falwell does, and they are not isolated in the dark corners of American
society. Some of them have considerable influence. Success in accumulating
money and making a name for yourself, however achieved, counts far more
than decency or intelligence in America. Just ask the man who now occupies
the White House.
Falwell's second-favorite
occupation is making idiotic statements blaming others for disasters.
In this he displays a common American trait, blaming others for what
goes wrong. But Falwell takes the practice to a lunatic level, the best
example being his statement, just days after 9/11, that America's liberal
and gay citizens were responsible for God's allowing such destruction.
His third occupation is apologizing.
Going way back to 1985, Falwell apologized to Jewish Americans for regularly
using the expression "Christian America." He said he wouldn't
use it in future, but nasty old habits are tough to break, and, in fact,
he did use it again.
In 1999, he again apologized
to Jews for what probably qualifies as his most bizarre and inexplicable
utterance, "Antichrist was probably alive and that he was in the
form of a male Jew." His apology expressed regret for having said
these disturbing words but did not disavow belief in them.
Odd that on a recent tour
in the United States, Mr. Netanyahu - Israel's answer to Richard Nixon
with a generous dash of John Gotti tossed in - was photographed consulting
with Mr. Falwell. There appears to be no shame to the alliances of intolerant
politicos. But, as I said, money and celebrity count for immense influence
in America, and it doesn't much matter what you did to get them.
About a week after 9/11,
Falwell apologized for his having said, days before, that the nation's
liberal and gay citizens were somehow responsible for very angry men
from the other side of the planet high-jacking airliners and blowing
up buildings in America. He made his original claim on the television
program of another fundamentalist know-nothing, Pat Robertson, who readily
responded with "I totally concur." Perhaps Robertson used
"concur" rather than "agree" to emphasize the high
tone of this scholarly exchange.
Now, Falwell has apologized
for remarks on still another television show. Perhaps anxious to demonstrate
his leadership capacity for making tasteless, ignorant statements at
a time of international crisis, Falwell originally said he had read
enough to believe that the prophet Muhammad was "a terrorist,"
"a violent man," and "a man of war."
One just has to wonder what
it is that Falwell read. Perhaps it was one of the "comic strips"
put out by some of his fellow American fundamentalists portraying Muslims
as dark, evil characters opposing the nation's Christian values and
Manifest Destiny. Precisely such material does circulate today in America.
It is difficult to imagine Falwell ever having read a serious book,
or at least having done so with any reasonable understanding. After
all, this is a man on guard against Tinky Winky the teletubby.
I don't know whether anyone
else has noticed recently, but Falwell is looking more and more like
Jabba the Hutt, that gross outlaw slug from the Star Wars movies, although
his voice and manner remind one rather of the late, professional cowboy-hick,
Pat Butrum.
The growing resemblance strikes
me as somehow oddly fitting, a kind of In the Heat of the Night-version
of the Picture of Dorian Gray. Only here, the nasty figure himself grows
more repulsive and bloated every week. But I feel sure that when the
smarmy Falwell looks in a mirror, he knows just who to blame.
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