When it comes to unadulterated, morbid avarice informed by megalomania, few can touch the seersucker insanity of Marion "Stop calling me Marion" Robertson. And his time will come soon enough, and he can spend eternity helping his good buddy Mobutu Sese Seko shovel shit in hell.
Jerry Falwell was not Marion Robertson, but he certainly did his part to muck up our political process with his minions o' superstition. No doubt you can thank Falwell for his tiresome encouragement of snake-handling boobs to use the ballot box as therapy for the past 25 years. And you can directly thank him for Monica Goodling, who literally arrogated unto herself the power to coordinate hirings in the DoJ based on who seemed Bushier-than-thou. Goodling is merely the most powerful of the 150 Regent "University" graduates infesting the halls of formerly responsible power. This was no accident; this was Falwell's stated mission.
I'll always remember Falwell for his sanctimonious lecturing of a grief-stricken nation; literally hours after 9/11, he and Marion informed us that it was our secular hedonism, our tolerance of lesbos and abortions and such, that caused it to happen. There's no walking back from that; there's no excuse or act of contrition that can undo such a complete abdication of any pretense to moral authority.
But (and here's where professional journamalists have guys like me over a barrel, with their sheer professionamalness) this one guy thinks that Falwell was a great moral leader -- which, as a commenter at that link points out, is just so awesome. Really, some of these reporters must just spend their days wondering why they didn't just stay in law school and make an honest living for themselves, instead of uncritically regurgitating pablum on cue.
[Update: Here's an especially scathing eulogy from Hitchens, atop his game as he fortuitously pimps the theme of his latest book. Timing, as always, is everything. But if an opportunist, in this instance Hitchens is an honest and erudite one.]
Regent is actually Robertson's diploma mill, not Falwell's. His is (was! yes! was! start using the past tense!) Liberty U.
ReplyDeleteAhh, but who cares? It's a day for rejoicing! I'm only an hour and some north of Lynchburg - what kind of beverage would you suggest I imbibe if I wanted to, say, take a really putrid piss on a freshly-churned patch of earth? Asparagus juice?
Just curious, that's all.
Shit, nice catch. I conflated my Christofascists' educational redoubts. Considering how Falwell supposedly felt about Jews -- with the caveat, of course, that every Jew is just an evangelical Christian waiting to come out -- maybe Manischewitz would be the drink of choice.
ReplyDeleteI'm strangely reluctant to piss on Falwell's grave too directly or profusely. I suppose it's because he's something of an anomaly in that community -- he didn't really seem to have any ugly skeletons in the closet, nor any unseemly business ties with seedy dictators. He didn't get caught snorting crank of a gay hooker's cock, or any of the other shit we've all become inured to from these hypocrites.
Then there's Tammy Faye Bakker, who has discontinued her chemo and is down to 65 pounds. I actually feel bad for her; even a tv grifter doesn't deserve that kind of fate, and she has at least approached with grace and courage.
But Falwell was the author of a lot of institutionalized irresponsibility, and perhaps one hopes his god is more merciful and forgiving than he himself was of his transgressors. The rest of us have to continue dealing with the fallout, and getting the law school termites out of the DoJ and wherever else they infested.
I can settle for Falwell serving as an object lesson for why we should push the Dobsons and Robertsons back out on the margin, where they never should have left.
Yeah, I'm more rabid than most on this (thought I was going to start a pair of fights at work this morning by being open about my thoughts), being a native of the same state and having probably been exposed to much more of his rhetoric that didn't rise to the level of national news.
ReplyDeleteI especially remember a gay man in my town who was beaten, stripped naked and locked in the trunk of his car for more than 24 hours in freezing temperatures, and shortly afterwards reading some of Jerry's execratory spewings about gays. That kind of permanently did it for me, and I've been counting the days down to yesterday ever since. Plus, I think I told you that I worked in Lynchburg for several years, and have been to the Liberty campus before. That whole Jonestown vibe there creeps me the fuck out, so that probably plays a part in my visceral reaction.
Greg at This Modern World had a little thing about the difference between Falwell and Tammy Faye. I don't consider her vile, and I more or less think of the whole Oral Roberts/Jim Bakker/Swaggart "Send Me Your Money"* thing as a testament to pathetic human gullibility more than Christofascism.
*Raising a glass in tribute to the great Suicidal Tendencies song.