Ding Dong the Witch is Dead ...

[SAdler]

>I'll even go much further than SAdler in not respecting this

>madman and will willfully take any consequences that will

>come:

 

Let's leave the song re-writing to me

 

Ding Dong! Falwell's dead. Which Falwell? The foul Falwell!

Ding Dong! The Wicked Falwell's dead.

Wake up - stop giving head, rub your balls, get out of bed.

Wake up, the Wicked Falwell's dead.

He's gone where the

assholes go,

Below - below - below. Yo-ho, let's go into the bars and sing and bring

shots out.

Ding Dong' the happy-hoe, don't get high, come watch the show!

Let them know

The Wicked Falwell's dead!

 

As to forgive and forget ... and not rejoicing in someone else's death no matter how evil. I agree for most cases except in the the case of the golden rule. This man would have been ecstatic if myself or any other gay died of AIDS.

 

In my mind, I'm truly extending him the same courtesy he'd have extended to me.

[Guest zipperzone]

I have a hard time understanding or agreeing with the messages posted by deej and any others who in any way condone Fallwell's ministry.

 

He was pure evil, just one step removed from the Phelps clan.

 

As someone else has said, how many suicides can be attributed to his rantings? How much homophobia is alive and well today due to his preachings?

 

May he roast in hell for eternity.

[N.N.]

I don't believe in an afterlife, so if I celebrate his death I'm not celebrating any eternal suffering in hell; I'm just celebrating his absence. That's not mean spirited, it's just recognizing that the world is better off without him.

[BigD]

He is dead. But the evil lies that he preached live on. And he has trained an army to replace him. There is no reason to rejoice because I fear those that follow will be even more vindictive and homophobic. Those that support their bias and hatred with selected words from their holy book are growing. And they feel they have a holy war to win. No worse enemy exists than those with fundamentalist justification.

 

I do find it interesting that the Reverend didn't die well. He bloated up in the last few years; he looked very unhealthy. Still, they will turn him into a martyr.

 

The evil lives on.

[Guest RandyRon]

I fail to see what "good" this man did. If someone (deej?) would enlighten me. As to it being simply a matter of disagreement that he hated gay lifestyle rather than the gay person, remember that the first step that the Nazis took was to label their enemies as evil. Once you have convinced the public that someone is evil, it's easy to take the next step in the hate campaign and start sending them to concentration camps.

 

Do I rejoice in his death? Not really, because there are still many like him and always will be. But, I'm sure not shedding any tears for him either. Of course GWB and the rest of the religious right will have him canonized by the end of the week.

[Guest jeffOH]

RE: One less Charlatan !!

 

>If you'd ever care to discuss him by name instead of by some

>childish pejorative that a 9-year old might come up with in a

>schoolyard we might have a grown-up discussion, Jeff.

 

I wouldn't "care to discuss him by name", thanks.

 

>Call me when you're ready to stop preaching hate and carry on

>a reasoned adult conversation.

 

A "reasoned adult conversation"? About Fakewell? Right. That's a conversation you'll be having with yourself. I'll take that as a NO "GOOD" that his ministry ever did.

 

>Until that day comes, you're no better than he was.

 

Bullshit! I think most people can differentiate between a MAN who spent his life using religion divisively promoting ignorance, bigotry, racism, anti-semitism and homophobia and ME who simply thinks it's a good thing such a man is no longer alive.

[AdamSmith]

RE: Ding Dong the Witch is Dead ... Larry Flynt Comments

 

> I thought that Flynt went too far. The

>license or the right to do something actually places a large

>burden of responsibility on society at large. Just because

>something can be done, does not mean that it should be done.

 

The value of people like Flynt pushing the envelope is that without them, the envelope can narrow and narrow until it infringes even the middle zone where most of us live. In interviews and his debates with Falwell, Flynt was eloquent on how First Amendment principles were what were really at stake. Also privacy and other values questioned in some quarters.

[RockHard]

RE: One less Charlatan! But the hatred remains.

 

"Hate is learned, not inborn."

 

And the poster who wrote this seems to have learned much. There's more "hate" in his little post than in anything I've ever heard come from Falwell. And what disturbs me most, this homosexual is cloaked entirely in his own self-righteousness, the only defense he has for any introspection is, "Bullshit!"

 

I think hate breeds hate and insecure homosexuals with lots of baggage and an agenda sure prove that. Not just homosexuals, either. The vitriol in the "Reader's Opinion" section of the NY Times astonished me. Many people will jump at the chance to be a "Falwell" if given a chance.

 

I never met the man and I sure DID NOT enjoy his politics or the voice he gave to the thousands of Americans who believe as Falwell believed. May he rest in peace.

[RockHard]

RE: Larry Flynt Comments

 

I agree with Adam Smith. The Supreme Court case helped define "freedom." Not all freedoms make people "feel" comfortable but they're extremely important and relevant to the bigger picture.

[AdamSmith]

RE: Larry Flynt Comments

 

>I agree with Adam Smith. The Supreme Court case helped define

>"freedom." Not all freedoms make people "feel" comfortable but

>they're extremely important and relevant to the bigger

>picture.

 

Exactly. Close to the principle that drove the Framers, in constructing a democracy, to put in counterbalancing protections against mob rule. Which, when you think about it, is essentially whatever the majority feels comfortable with.

 

Somewhat related to Ben Franklin's great line: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Though less relevant to the free-expression point than to the current homeland security hysteria.)

[Guest jeffOH]

RE: Rude Pundit on Fakewell

 

I LOVE the Rude Pundit and I couldn't wait to read his tribute to Fakewell.

 

5/16/2007

Dead Falwell:

 

Jerry Falwell was a poison, a jowly backwoods cretin who used his abilities to calmly, smilingly spin entire worlds of nutzoid damnation and spew them into the airwaves to build the illusion of an empire, all fake gossamer and cash. For the better part of four decades, his gluttonous, bovine visage befouled our television screens, slavering ratings w-h- o-r-e-s of the news networks ready to lift his gargantuan belly, resting it on their heads, to fellate him for all the good quotes he could weave from cultishly mad religious fervor, always smiling, that smug fuckin' smile of self-righteousness, of acting so God-stoned that he couldn't wipe Christ's blood out of his eyes. No wonder he was a man who looked like he enjoyed his pork rinds - he always had the Jesus-spliff munchies.

 

You could populate entire vital nations with the people he despised and wanted to cast into pits of despair if they didn't accept his Son of God, a pissy little deity who, like an overly inbred emperor, demands unquestioning loyalty and obeisance. To give yourself to Falwell's God was to announce to the world that all questions from "Why is there war?" to "Why does Grandpa have bleeding hemorrhoids?" could be answered with God's name and will invoked. What an amazingly ignorant way to exist. And all you needed to join in was to give your hard-earned money to him. "If we don't tithe, we rob God," Falwell told his stupid flock. Give part of your Social Security check to the man, not the God, but the man, Falwell, who would, he assured you, do God's will with it. And how did you know God's will would be done? Because Falwell assured you it would be. Because, oh, sweet bliss of tautologies, Falwell knew. How did you know Falwell knew? Because he told you so. No wonder George W. Bush is president.

 

And he used that cash, guilted out of the pockets of his parishioners, to take religious faith and drag it into the gutter of politics to rape it and beat it and cut it and leave it a scarred freakish shell of what it might have be, appealing to the basest instincts of people to perpetuate lies and illusions. So rather than devote all his resources into doing the shit that maybe Christ might have wanted him to do, like, you know, help the poor, Falwell split the difference, building the Moral Majority, his TV show, and his (eventually-called) Liberty University, all things that paid lip service to doing things in God's name, but were really about the greater glory of the man, not the God, but the man, Falwell.

 

Part and parcel of that was to toss red meat to the faithful, telling them who to hate, who to spurn, who to despise, all couched in terms of trying to "change hearts" and get them to accept his Christ. Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, gays, liberals of any faith, illegal immigrants, anyone who didn't fit into his version of Christianity (which meant "people who give money to Jerry Falwell") were merely more bits of coal for Lucifer's fires. Motherfucker said, flat out, that Anne Frank, Gandhi, Muhammed, and Buddha were in hell. He pretty much started the culture wars, against anyone who supported abortion, feminism, or funding for AIDS research, looked at pornography, made art that he deemed wrong. Yes, there were preachers before Falwell who goddamned masses of people, but Falwell did it with a bigger microphone and satellites and cable TV, and with that voice, and that smile, that attitude of rationality, as if anyone who didn't feel the same way he did must be a fool. His fetid rhetoric made intolerance and hate seem like moral stances.

 

And, up to his death, all the politicians since Reagan let him into the White House had to make offerings to Falwell in order to get his blessings for their candidacies. But the Republicans (mostly) were more than willing to degrade themselves and do a little moral and ethical striptease for Falwell, at Liberty University events, in private, whenever, making sure that Falwell would not send his zombie hordes out to drag down a potential president. John McCain must be feeling pretty skeevy this morning, covered, as he was, with Falwell semen from the lap dance he gave the man just a few weeks ago. Falwell made sure that the Republican party was dragged from moderation to monkeyfuck madness. And, thanks to Falwell, it will be a generation before the GOP recovers.

 

His father was a violent redneck bootlegger who shot his own brother, but, lo and fuckin' behold, accepted Christ on his deathbed. Falwell was born again when he heard a radio preacher. He sued Larry Flynt because Flynt dared to publicly spank him by creating a mock ad about Falwell fucking his mother in an outhouse. Falwell lost when the Supreme Court said that anyone was free to make fun of assholes like Falwell (and non-assholes, too). He pushed the Congress to go after Bill Clinton for the "good" of the nation when, in reality, it helped set the nation on its current path of real, actual damnation.

 

The Rude Pundit hopes that, after his death, Falwell awoke, and, much to his horror - eternal horror, as it will turn out, found himself in hell, nude, trussed up, his ass plugged with a spiky mace. Falwell looked around him and saw dancing demons with gigantic, barbed cocks and flames. Oh, shit, this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. And Falwell tried to speak, but he discovered he had no voice, no way to say anything, and no one to hear him that would care. Then, the demons would hold his mouth open and start to stuff his gullet, with the corpses of people who died of AIDS, with the burnt remains of men and women who keep dying in all the wars he helped support in the name of Israel and Armageddon, with cash, tons of cash, and his mansion, and his cars, and his school, and a 150 Liberty Law School grads in the Bush adminstration, and tapes of his Old-Time Gospel Hour, and his books and his recordings and every bit of evidence that he was ever on the earth above, shove into his fat mouth, his saggy ass cheeks quivering, needing to push it out, but unable to. Shove that in there until that bastard blows up, showering the giggling demons with his viscera and gore, and then let them eat his remains, shit out the pieces, put him back together, and start all over again.

 

Or, maybe even moreso, the Rude Pundit would like to think that, at the moment of his death, as he collapsed behind his desk, Falwell did not see any light, any path through the clouds, just a brief realization that this, indeed, was it, and that he was so very wrong, just before eternal darkness clouded his foul brain forever.

 

Update: Sometimes you forget how exhilirating Christopher Hitchens can be when he's on your side.

 

 

// posted by Rude One @ 9:43 AM| DiggIt!| Del.icio.us|

[+ Gar1eth]

RE: Ding Dong the Witch is Dead ... Larry Flynt Comments

 

>> I thought that Flynt went too far. The

>>license or the right to do something actually places a large

>>burden of responsibility on society at large. Just because

>>something can be done, does not mean that it should be done.

>

>

>The value of people like Flynt pushing the envelope is that

>without them, the envelope can narrow and narrow until it

>infringes even the middle zone where most of us live. In

>interviews and his debates with Falwell, Flynt was eloquent on

>how First Amendment principles were what were really at stake.

>Also privacy and other values questioned in some quarters.

 

 

I understand about the 1st Amendment. I am for the 1st Amendment. I would not like to live in a country where there is no 1st Amendment--which is what makes the discussion so difficult. I still maintain that living in a country with a guaranteed right like the 1st Amendment reaquires a greater burden of self-censorship on the part of those who might try to push things to the "edge". Continual pushing to the "edge" can lead to a coarsening of society. Again this is a dificult argument for me to make because I don't particularly want anyone censoring me. And while in the abstract yes I believe whole-heartedly in the 1st Amendment--in reality I think there are "slippery slopes" and the end of the slope may be in ditch that we can't get out of.

 

Gman

[Guest rover]

Even though it's in somewhat poor taste to cheer his death, Falwell truly was a despicable man. The flat, puffy face; the porcine eyes; and the contrived piety made him look like he was out of central casting (Televangelist, please). He, like the rest of his ilk, regularly defended his gay-bashing by claiming that he just hated the "sin" but love the sinner. I don't buy that. Their theological gay-bashing helped to create a toxic environment in which some sexually confused members of their flocks acted out on real gays, with often tragic consequences.

[Rick Munroe]

Don't believe the hype

 

Jonathan Alter: "The truth about the Rev. Jerry Falwell is that he was a character assassin and hype artist who left little positive impact on the United States -- and little negative impact either, for that matter.

Besides founding Liberty University, he won't be remembered as nearly as influential as he's made out to be."

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-alter/dont-believe-the-falwell_b_48628.html

[Rick Munroe]

RE: Don't believe the hype

 

This is really worth watching:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfw7hUEujUw

[RockHard]

RE: Don't believe the hype

 

Thanks for the links, Rick. Even though I don't always agree with Jonathan Alter and Christopher Hitchens, I do enjoy hearing their opinions.

[Rick Munroe]

RE: Don't believe the hype

 

I agree, and you're welcome.

[AdamSmith]

The contrast between Falwell and Billy Graham seems instructive. Graham has his own faults but, unlike Falwell and a lot of others, has always struck me as motivated more by love than by hate. Couple of interesting pieces on Graham...

 

http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/graham01.html

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14204483/site/newsweek/

[Guest ReturnOfS]

In Loving Memory of Jerry Falwell

 

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson on "Family Guy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-LyCtyzhs&mode=related&search=

 

Youtube remembers Jerry Falwell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96fj-ub642c

[alanalt]

Like most, if not all, on this board I didn't agree with Mr. Falwell on almost anything. Too many of his actions and pronouncements appeared far from Christ-like as he often seemed determined to spread bigotry and prejudice rather than love and healing. But I think it's important to recognize that he didn't cause the bigotry and hatred he exploited in his career; rather those tendencies have long been a part of our society. But hatred, like poison or cancer, is most effective when it remains concealed. Only time will tell if he made his prejudices and hatreds 'respectable' but at least he helped bring them out into the open where they can be fought and challenged.

 

I also find it ironic as a Christian that Jerry Falwell too often seems to have forgotten Christ's commandment "that you love one another as I have loved you" (John 15.12). Nothing in the New Testament shows that Christ restricted his love to heterosexuals or that he required homosexuals to 'repent' before loving them.

 

Jerry Falwell's death goes unmourned by me, but neither do I presume to judge him the way he presumed to judge others. "Judge not, that you will be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you" (Matthew 7.1-2). Mr. Falwell may have neglected that bit of scripture, I try not to...

[RockHard]

A thoughtful post, alanalt.

 

"Nothing in the New Testament shows that Christ restricted his love to heterosexuals or that he required homosexuals to 'repent' before loving them."

 

Call them what you will, but certain segments of conservative orthodoxy refuse to recognize the New Testament. Whether Jew, Christian, born-again, or ultra-conservative Catholic, they cling to the Old Testament or the Torah, which means they cling to Leviticus.

 

None of these groups cares to look at who wrote what and why because they believe the words came from God. God comes before Jesus so Jesus becomes irrelevant on this subject. They fail to consider or acknowledge any historical "context," which is absolutely necessary when reading Leviticus.

 

In pagan times, it's perfectly understandable why religious leaders or men of God would try to ban the act of sex between men, which was pretty commonplace. Male homosexuality has a defeating effect on pro-creation and if society's men aren't making babies and being good husbands, civilizations will fall and crumble.

 

Modern science shows, the vast majority of men in this world are heterosexual, whether they like it or not. The survival of civilization no longer hangs on the threat of men coming out of their closet. Much bigger threats loom.

[raulgmanzo]

Beware of mixing clothing with mixed fibers

 

Rockhard sensibly points out:

>[...] They fail to consider or acknowledge any historical "context,"

> which is absolutely necessary when reading Leviticus.

 

Further investigation into the historical context might lead one to believe that Levitcus was not condemning homosexuality but the male Canaanite temple prostitutes acting as women. While I think cross dressing is fine, god clearly is concerned with the clothing we wear. Leviticus 19:19 condemnation of mixing wool and linen in the same garment makes that quite clear.

 

Raul

[+ glutes]

"I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I think we can make an exception because speaking ill of the dead was kind of Jerry Falwell's hobby." Bill Maher

[GloriousGodfrey]

RE: One less Charlatan! But the hatred remains.

 

>"Hate is learned, not inborn."

>

>And the poster who wrote this seems to have learned much.

>There's more "hate" in his little post than in anything I've

>ever heard come from Falwell. And what disturbs me most, this

>homosexual is cloaked entirely in his own self-righteousness,

>the only defense he has for any introspection is, "Bullshit!"

>

>I think hate breeds hate and insecure homosexuals with lots of

>baggage and an agenda sure prove that. Not just homosexuals,

>either. The vitriol in the "Reader's Opinion" section of the

>NY Times astonished me. Many people will jump at the chance to

>be a "Falwell" if given a chance.

>

>I never met the man and I sure DID NOT enjoy his politics or

>the voice he gave to the thousands of Americans who believe as

>Falwell believed. May he rest in peace.

 

Almost amusing to hear you of all people admonish others for being self righteous, but certainly no one on this board would be more of an expert in what is bullshit or not than you.

 

Falwell is getting back every bit of karma due to him. Like deej, I do not wish the man ill, but I am so very glad he is gone. Hopefully Pat Robertson won't be far behind.

[Guest jeffOH]

RE: One less Charlatan! But the hatred remains.

 

>Almost amusing to hear you of all people admonish others for

>being self righteous, but certainly no one on this board would

>be more of an expert in what is bullshit or not than you.

>

>Falwell is getting back every bit of karma due to him. Like

>deej, I do not wish the man ill, but I am so very glad he is

>gone. Hopefully Pat Robertson won't be far behind.

 

Amen Brother! Unlike you and deej, I DO wish "the man ill". Who the fuck cares? I'm glad he's gone. I hope he's reborn as a black, lesbian Muslim. If Dobson and Robertson were to drop dead TOMORROW (of natural causes of course }() I wouldn't feel the least bit of remorse. I think the world will be much better as more of their ilk die off. Good Riddance MotherFucker!

 

Amen and Glory Hallelujah!