Falwell dead...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ May 16 2007, 11:37 AM) [snapback]443358[/snapback]</div>

That's okay, I'm quite able to follow the thread and its theme. I'm sorry you're having such trouble with it. Thanks for your concern; it would be better self-directed. Good luck!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ May 16 2007, 11:02 AM) [snapback]443333[/snapback]</div>

Falwell was once a fervent segregationist who often made mention of what he called the "Civil Wrongs Movement" and had racists like George Wallace and Lester Maddox on his radio show. About the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, he said, "The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.†But we should accept that, because, as you say, "he spoke what he believed to be moral truth"?
He didn't just preach that homosexuality is a sin. He blamed gays for the 9/11 attacks. He said that AIDS was a punishment from God. He attacked a church that welcomed gay members, saying it was "part of a vile and satanic system [that] will one day be utterly annihilated."
I am not "glad he's dead". But I will not, just because he is dead, make him into something he wasn't. Perhaps the people who knew him personally, even Larry Flynt, thought that he was amiable in person. But that does not change the fact that he was a bigot, a hatemonger, and a zealot who used religion as a means to promote his political agenda and to accumulate great wealth and power.
And perhaps the group that he harmed the most was Christians. There are complaints here on FHOP and elsewhere about "Christian-bashing". What is it about the Christian faith that causes this ire in some people? Is the Biblical messages of "love thy neighbor" and "turn the other cheek"? Supposedly there are over 300 Bible verses that speak about the poor and social justice (I'll defer to the Bible experts on the precise number) and one questionable passage in Leviticus that mentions homosexuality. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and their ilk have become known as the representatives of Christianity, and have given it a very bad image. Perhaps if the most visible Christians in this country were more Christian, there wouldn't be so much "Christian-bashing".

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ZenCruiser @ May 16 2007, 10:44 AM) [snapback]443371[/snapback]</div>

Now that your mom read the thread to you and explained what's going on, can you explain how you came to understand that this thread is not happy that fallwell is dead?

That's your point, lay out the arguement.

Ah... right.. you can't..

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ May 16 2007, 11:49 AM) [snapback]443379[/snapback]</div>

My mom read it to me? From that statement alone I can only surmise that you're in the 3rd, maybe 4th grade. Should we meet in the playground of the school after the final bell to fight it out? Pass me a note.

I could explain it. It's just that it's painfully obvious that doing so for you is an utter waste of time and less enjoyable than, say, shaving one's head with a cheese grater.

 

A majority of the thread, if your reading comprehension was above a 1st grade level, says that he wasn't a good guy. What he preached wasn't a good message. By no longer having his message of hate and bigotry broadcast with every breath, people are hopeful that the world will be a better place.

The majority of the people aren't happy he's dead - just happy that his message has been silenced. hopefully you can see the distinction.

 

Fate threw me into close proximity with Falwell when, in 1969, when he was 35 and I was 28, I was assigned as a VISTA Volunteer to work with the Federally-funded anti-poverty agency in Lynchburg. The Moral Majority, his shmoozing of Reagan and Liberty University were still well into the future. A New Yorker, I had not heard of him to that point.

But he was quite the local celebrity (for most "natives"). He had already amassed the largest private fleet of buses in the South to transport kids to his Thomas Road private school, and thus had assumed the mantle of the most successful segregationist "educator", in reaction to the Court-ordered integration of public schools. (Yes, the Supreme Court had ruled segregated schools illegal in 1954, but it was the Federal District Courts that later on ordered and oversaw the specifics of what white schools would be merged with what black ones, which ones would be closed, how busing plans would operate, reassignment of teachers, etc. It took fully another 16 years after 1954 before Lynchburg got to that implementation phase.)

Falwell did not regard blacks as "full human beings". They were discouraged from participating in services at his Thomas Road Baptist Church. But Falwell was a tick shrewder than your average cracker preacher when it came to PR, since he knew then he had aspirations for achieving national stature. In those days, the state HQ for the Klan was 25 miles down the road in Bedford, and blacks were commonly referred to by most local whites as "monkeys" and "coons"; the best they could aspire to in central and southern VA was "Nigras". Falwell used "Nigras", at least in public. He even boasted that blacks were welcome in his church---so long as they sat together in the balcony, rather than on the ground floor with the whites.

Since the agency I worked for addressed the issue of poverty as it affected low-income whites as well as most blacks, people like Falwell spoke disdainfully of us and discouraged poor whites from accepting our assistance. They took pains to discover those of us whose home state was "up North", likening all of us as "paid Federal troublemakers"---which, in truth, a few of us indeed became in due course, out of frustration with how poor whites were manipulated by folks like Falwell.

I could go on, but would probably bore you to death. I saw Falwell, then not as obese as he became with success, but did not have any conversation with him. Suffice to say that for the three years I lived there ( I "re-upped" twice when my one-year commitments expired), Falwell represented a large obstacle to the race-free work I wanted to do. He made himself The Enemy in his zeal to drive a wedge between poor blacks and poor whites.

For any PriusChatters who live(d) in those parts: how I wish I could have had a Prius then! To calm my frayed nerves two or three times a month, I'd drive a few of us over to Roanoke and cruise the Blue Ridge Parkway from there. (Of course, I drove the obligatory VW and got 32 MPG, when gas was $.299/gal., so it was under-penny-a-mile driving!) One of the best roads in the U.S.! Those parts of VA and NC (south) are just too beautiful for words.

I have mixed feelings about his death. I'm pleased that he lived to see a lot of his "ideal world" crumble, or begin to, in spite of his best efforts.

 

Interesting reply Jack. Thank you for your experience.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(richard schumacher @ May 16 2007, 07:22 AM) [snapback]443278[/snapback]</div>

Curious, why do you cite these two people?

Wildkow

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(larkinmj @ May 16 2007, 08:47 AM) [snapback]443378[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jack Kelly @ May 16 2007, 01:31 PM) [snapback]443651[/snapback]</div>

If there were a god, and if there were a heaven and a hell, this would certainly be sufficient to condemn him to a place warmer than he'd like. Fortunately for him, his fantasies were just that, and instead of burning in hell, where hs own god would certainly have sent him, he's merely worm food, as we all will be soon enough. Unless he was cremated.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ZenCruiser @ May 16 2007, 03:46 AM) [snapback]443203[/snapback]</div>

Your cites are proving my point. Falwell was routinely nice to individuals. His friends included liberals as well as conservatives:

You disagree with him on social and political issues, and don't like some of the things he said. Yeah, me too. But the demonizing of him as exhibited in this thread is much more an example of specific hate, meted out to a specific person that none of you know. It is, in a word, shameful.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ May 15 2007, 11:02 AM) [snapback]442637[/snapback]</div>

Yah, Yah, Yah, can we get on with the rapture now? Give it a rest already. Honestly being one of those of liberal thoughts and ideologies I don't rejoice but I also feel no pain either. Why should I since he was nothing to me and did not once put his life on the line for something that is worth defending. Why is his death even newsworthy except for Fox of course. He is no more or less noteworthy than anyone else that died yesterday.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ May 17 2007, 12:06 AM) [snapback]443901[/snapback]</div>

If your point was that he had friends, that was not what I was stating. I'm sure he did have friends. My point is that friends are more of a personal issue; his life was very public, and some of the things he not only stood for, but "sermonized" about, were truly hateful and opposite of what the "Christian lifestyle" espouses.

Being a public figure, he used that position to push his own beliefs. I don't need to know him personally to respond to what he says publically. If you don't consider some of his statements to be more hateful than anything that has been written about him in this thread, than our value sets are much further apart than I would have imagined. I do not understand anyone's need to defend someone like this.

 

The thread discription should read Falwel dead, Let the Hate mongering begin.

Jack Kelly: nice dissertation, your rite falwell did get to see the poor whites & blacks now manipulating the system instead of the opposite.


This has to be the best quote on this thread as it speaks the truth B) :

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hycamguy07 @ May 17 2007, 11:57 AM) [snapback]444192[/snapback]</div>

I would respond to that directly, but I think that ZenCruiser already said it very well:

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...notes051807.DTL

Is there a rational explanation why legions of christians idolized this cultist hate-mongerer?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(livelychick @ May 15 2007, 02:06 PM) [snapback]442567[/snapback]</div>

tbh, that is exactly what i thought too... "good".

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ May 24 2007, 02:24 PM) [snapback]449210[/snapback]</div>

Yes. He had "Reverend" in front of his name. Some people don't look any further than that.
His type is a slap in the face to those with that title that actually do preach peace, love and understanding.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ZenCruiser @ May 24 2007, 02:42 PM) [snapback]449230[/snapback]</div>

So does "Reverend" Fred Phelps

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ May 16 2007, 04:51 PM) [snapback]443709[/snapback]</div>

Because they too were big in their day, and are now unremembered footnotes in history.

Falwell was a fat evil f!!cker. We are better off with him dead.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(richard schumacher @ May 16 2007, 07:22 AM) [snapback]443278[/snapback]</div>

Somehow, I find this misuse of a quote that referred to Abraham Lincoln "Now he belongs to the ages" more offensive than anything else I've read up until now.

Falwell does not measure up to that accolaide. Sorry.