Falwell’s Gone - Good Riddance Not Goodbye
America was a more civil place in April ‘94 when Richard Nixon died. Broadband and blogging were still pipe dreams. So there wasn’t the instant media cacophony that greets every slightly newsworthy events these days.
There was still a modicum of civility in public dialog.
So, when Nixon, an eminently disagreeable sort who failed in his attempt to undermine the constitution, died, he was generally treated with kid gloves. His anti-semitic rants were glossed over. That he sent a bunch of thugs to burglarize the offices of his foes was mentioned but not dwelled upon. That he perpetrated the greatest cover up in the history of American politics — present administration excepted — was discussed in an educational context.
Nixon was dead. Most agreed, let him rest in peace, the republic has moved on.
Except, of course, for the honorable Hunter Thompson, who railed against Tricky Dick with his usual bite and bile. Thompson, the kind who held a grudge, wasn’t about to let Nixon off the hook for his transgressions. His obit of the fallen president was a reality check.
Well, it’s a new day.
Jerry Falwell — it’s really hard to call him Reverend — was easily as divisive and loathsome a creature as Nixon. He died this week. The moderate and left-leaning media have been brutal. Everybody’s gone Hunter Thompson on the founder of the “Moral Majority.” It is at once invigorating, and, as well, a rather sad sign of the times.
Many who fell in the vast expanses of Falwell’s derision are disinclined to let him rest in peace.
Love him or hate him, Falwell’s legacies run deep. The use — many would say abuse — of religious belief to foster political power. Imperious public name calling to denigrate those who believe differently.
Jerry Falwell ran interference for the Ann Coulters and Bill O’Reillys of the world. We aren’t the better off for it.
Anyway, at the risk of piling on, and proving, if nothing else, that I’m for better or worse a product of the modern age, I must add my two cents. Falwell was an opportunistic scumbag. He blamed 9/11 on abortionists. He took the immoral ground on homosexuality. He blasphemed Martin Luther King, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Jews, Muslims, children’s TV shows and those who are trying to warn us about the global warming crisis.
Jerry Falwell was not a good person.
Good riddance.
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Falwell was not a decent person. Nothing but negative hate.
As 2007 may in fact be a harsher time than 1994, it is hard for me not to find Mr. Falwell a far more harshly devisive, hateful and woefully more ignorant a public figure than Richard Nixon. If one choose’s to “work” the side of the street that Mr. Fawell chose to work , you could pretty much expect to carry an entire buttload of hate to the grave and beyond.I always felt that if the god that Mr. Falwell and his ilk profess to believe in, truely existed , he would come down to earth and light the whole lot of the’re worthless asses on fire!! As a straight,white, non Hebrew male I missed out on most of Mr. Falwell’s most specious spewage but I can say that the world without Mr. Falwell is a better place for my childern to live in!