JERRY FALWELL DEAD AT 73: THE END OF A DEMAGOGUE

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." --Jerry Falwell

Good-riddance asshole. He told America that we're a religious nation--we sure are, and it's been an albatross around our necks for decades. Believers need to keep their morality out of politics, we don't want you, go-away. As disgusting as Larry Flynt is, he was right about you: you were a scumbag who was lower than a pornographer, the Big Pimp selling lies and false-hope to the miserable. Finally, you're going to be useful--fertilizing the flowers. Consider the lilies, asswipe.

No-thanks for the Moral Majority, no-thanks for legislating petty morality, no-thanks for your ugly-mug on my tv set, no-thanks for your phony university, and no-thanks for your fake version of Jesus and his teachings. When the planes slammed-into the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, Falwell blamed the ACLU!

And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen." (Washington Post, 09.14.2001)

What a jackass, but at least Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, and Al Goldstein outlived Falwell. That's because God liked them more, obviously. When all these evangelists who believe that their personal wealth is attached to their beliefs lose all their money in a crash, it's going to entertaining to watch them blame themselves as their moronic grandparents did over seventy-years-ago. This is because they never learn, and never will.

Falwell dying is a watershed, and the ending of 27 years of bullshit from the religious right. They're in-disarray, and need to be kept that way. To neutralize them and their arguments isn't enough--they need to be inundated with truth, fact, and empiricism, daily. I'm not advocating the stifling of these folks' right to their own faith, but Americans also deserve the right to freedom from religion, and these twits have made it clear they want to force their beliefs on all of us. It seems he didn't like Jews either:

In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief. A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies'' show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children. Falwell was re-energized after family values proved important in the 2004 presidential election. (AP, 05.15.2007)

Yeah, 2004, the good-old-days, eh? When you're protecting raw power, you need ambulance chasers, pimps, preachers, and shills. This is what makes them anti-democratic and basically worthy of targeting for criticism and debate, though most of them aren't worthy of either. What's best is to ignore them in the mainstream dialog, while limiting their influence everywhere one can within the law. They found Falwell like they did Stalin.

There is something that Falwell and Flynt share: both of his families were engaged in bootlegging-hooch during Prohibition. Welcome to oblivion, Jerry, you never mattered. Welcome to darkness and the void. The lives of you and your parsonage aren't worth any more than anyone else, and you were never special. What you were was an embarrassment to most reasonable Americans and human beings the world over.

Your death couldn't have come at a better time, when your theocratic president is embattled, and your agenda is dying. Yes, there are few of your mutants in the Supreme Court, but they're going to become more-and-more isolated and marginalized, coming-off as a dowdy reminder of bad-times when our nation truly lost its mind and acted accordingly. Nobody had to catch you with an ugly, white-trash prostitute like Swaggert--we all assumed you were the same kind of trash. Your death is a blip. Jew-baiter, feminist-baiter, gay-baiter, nigger-baiter--you were a scumbag and worthless-piece-of-squirm. Your university will close, and you'll be a sad-footnote in American history, just like that other racist demagogue, Gerald L.K. Smith.

AP Today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6634769,00.html