Jerry Falwell obituary

[SteppingRazor]

It's a little late, I know, but hey, it's a weekly paper:

http://www.southflorida.com/citylink/sfe-cl-052307upfront,0,2754806.story


Jackass of the week:
Special dead-bigot edition
Let's go straight to the tape: Jerry Falwell, who died last week at 73, was a liar and a fraud with a heart so full of hatred for his fellow human beings that he welcomed AIDS as a godsend; hailed apartheid-era South Africa by telling his worshippers to buy krugerrands; and partially blamed pagans, lesbians, feminists and the ACLU for 9/11. We know he was a liar not just because of the aforementioned idiocies but because he once said of the Antichrist, "He'll be Jewish." Obviously, that was a lie -- Falwell was certainly not a member of the Jewish faith.

But more important than any of these things is the amazing cachet that Falwell's message of bigotry and intolerance had with an alarming number of Americans. His Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., boasts a membership of some 22,000, and Falwell's cynical, hostile takeover of disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker's PTL Ministries brought him hundreds of thousands more followers via the powers of direct mail and television.

As the founder of the Moral Majority Coalition, which metastasized into the Christian Coalition, Falwell disseminated more loathsome, close-minded dogma than any typical Middle Eastern terrorist could in 10 lifetimes. And so, if there truly is an afterlife, I imagine that May 15 found this supposed man of the cloth thinking, "Sweet Jesus, heaven sure is hot!" For with his ineffable jackassery, with his disgusting blind hatred for anything different than his own pasty-white, corpulent form, I am fairly certain where he will spend his post-life retirement; Jerry Falwell has gone home to hell.

[Swamp Rat]

1. ... long distance call for Pat Robertson... it's Tinky Falwell!