I will not miss Jerry Falwell.

My experience of Lynchburg runs back 50 years, although I haven't been there in person in the last 5 (my relatives still permeate the region). Your benign view of the city does not agree with my experience.

Sure, there is a group that thinks Falwell is a nuisance and a group that just resists his fraudulent tax exempt enterprises, but the region is not "conservative" as you assert, it is "evangelical" in all the menacing meanings of the word (this includes far too many of my own relatives). Falwell didn't create this condition, he found it and used it. But his Thomas Road Baptist Church (a place that many in Lynchburg avoid like the plague, for sure) still contributes to the continuation of this rigid authoritarian social setting.

I'd like to add, you might need to visit Amherst county (east of the town) or Appomattox County or Buckingham County or Bedford County, etc., to experience the true degree of his influence. The rural folk are far more influenced by that maniac than are the residents of the city.

Oh.. and for godsake... The Lynchburg newspaper makes the Richmond paper look liberal. The only liberal papers in Virginia are found in Roanoke, Newport News (or Portsmouth, I forget which) and Norfolk.... How many times am I gonna have to edit this... Of course Charlottesville has a liberal paper, too.

My barrista wished me a "Happy Falwell-less Day" this morning with my double tall. I'm passing his greeting along.

I've never wished Falwell dead. I don't think I've ever wished anyone dead. I suppose if Hitler were alive today, I'd wish he was dead. Other than that, no, I won't go there.

But am I glad that he's gone, now that he is dead? Yes. Absolutely. I would be deceiving myself to attempt to feel any other way.

It would have been better of course if he had changed his ways, but obviously he didn't and I doubt he ever would have. He enjoyed the power and wealth on this plane of existence (quite a bit, judging by his extreme corpulence) which he gained through spreading hatred and fear, and if there is indeed a Heaven, he's going to find out if he can fit his big fat ass thru the eye of a needle.

(ok I'm mixing up the metaphor a bit... work with me folks!)

I want to hear what Larry Flynt has to say.
:-)

I'd like to hear what MJ Rosenberg has to say about this (lefty comments on the death of Falwell).

May he rest in peace.

Falwell was a man who pushed boundaries: between compassion and condemnation, silent, private piety and public grandstanding, religion and politics. And everything was in the wrong direction. Even in death, he strains the taboo against speaking ill of the deceased.

If anyone has the right to write Falwell's obit, it's Larry Flynt.

He should lead with the outhouse story...

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Good point - I think this 'red state' business is way overdone. I think urban/rural is at least a slightly more robust division - and even then you can always point to exceptions.

You certainly don't have to be rich to fat - not in this country anyway.

This notion of Pat Robertson and Falwell being the Babtist co-popes misses the mark.

They don't represent a 'born again' tradition of rural, revival tent style charismatics - that's Jim Baker and company - the kind of guys who seduce their own congregants.

They tap into something much deeper and more powerful in the American psyche:

Puritanism.

Think about. They're not "good news" guys - they're fire and brimstone - talking about how bad people get just deserts - it dovetails with Calvinism also in the sense that they think the wealthy deserved their blessings and the poor deserved their lot in life.

Both Falwell and Robertson haven't been involved in sex scandals like the charismatic TV preachers. They're tightly wound Puritans, preaching fire and brimstone and decrying the wickedness of sex.

Peeps -- use the Google. That's why Falwell asked God to create it:

My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.

The most important result of our relationship was the landmark decision from the Supreme Court that made parody protected speech, and the fact that much of what we see on television and hear on the radio today is a direct result of my having won that now famous case which Falwell played such an important role in."

link

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

Sorry to be off-topic, Ed, but does anyone ever tell you that you look like John Hodgman, the PC guy in the Mac vs. PC commercials?

Ed does a good job pointing out that the Falwell's of the world don't speak for most religious people in America.

But he's forgetting that the problem here is still the treatment of religion. Christopher Hitchens had the best response to Falwell's death. He wonders why the media would let a man say such crazy, bigoted things and concludes it's because he has a religious honorific.

Maybe Ed's right and even in his own backyard Falwell didn't speak for most people. But he was only allowed to speak so loudly because our media gives such a big voice to those who claim to have faith.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

It's worth noting that Lynchburg is represented in the Virginia General Assembly by Del. Shannon Valentine, who is very much a Democrat. She won a special election in January 2006, absolutely crushing her Republican opponent something like 65/35.

Good riddance.

In many ways the problem is less these Preachers, and more people like Larry King, who, when a question emerges that has a moral dimension, turn rather automatically to the Falwells and the Dobsons -- as if this country didn't have over 400 versions of Protestant Christianity, as well as various Jewish traditions, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Islamic Schools of thought, and much more. The Falwells become the Falwells because the media producers and bookers have such limited address and phone books. They need to be called on the fact that they feature those in the BUSINESS OF RELIGION rather than those with more authentic learned religious credentials. The criticism should not really be directed at Falwell -- it should be pointed at those who enabled him.

Actually, the Charlottesville paper is called the "Daily Progress."  I call it "The Daily Disappointment," even though it deigns to carry many of my letters to the editor.

 My daughter goes to Sweet Briar College, and so I get down there with some regularity.  She recently attended a seminar open to the public by Richard Dawkins.  The Liberty crowd arrrived early and took most of the seats, and managed to disrupt the event by challenging every word he said.

Yesterday I heard an interview from two months ago with Falwell by Terry Gross.  When asked why he was so adamently against the Green Movement that some evangelists are embracing as being a good thing to do for the earth, he responded (paraphrasing):

It is Satan that is directing them to do this to distract them from Godly issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

What a venal old coot!

BTW, I wonder when people call him Dr. Falwell, if they know that he dropped out of college his sophomore year!  There is a person who works with me who swears that he also went to jail because of "some" inapprpriate behavior towards a child.

Jan

Minimizing a dead guy already? What happened to the sporting eulogic tradition, focusing on the good at least until the grass grows over the fresh dirt?

Regardless of the man's shortcomings, how we treat the dead affects the good of the community.

I attacked the ideas and methods he stood for before I ever knew his name; I attacked his heartless and ruthless agendas while he lived and dying did no improve his methods, manners or goals, or make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. As I said up thread, I will not miss him as I believe he left the world worse off from his sojourn here than he found it.

As far as people showing joy at his passing, like I said above me not being one of them, I can understand it.  Karma maybe?  Hate...what he gave in life he is getting back in death.

Minimizing?  What is wrong with speaking the truth?

This man preached hate, and even said that fellow evangelists who are concerned about the environment are following Satan.  I cannot comprehend why someone who spoke such hate and vengance during his life should be remembered for anything but his very own words.  What is wrong with that? 

Jan