Douchebag dead

The Falwell quote I remember best is this one.
September 2001: Falwell blames Americans for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “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.’”
(from The Carpetbagger Report, via Ginmar. It can also found elsewhere 1, 2, 3, 4)

When reflecting upon Falwell, one realizes there are many vile aspects of our culture which he embodied and perpetuated. They shouldn't be ranked in order of which was the vilest but each rational thinking person who lived under the rise and time of preacher/politicians like Falwell will have had the moment where you think "My god I hated him already but now I more-hate him. What's the superlative of "hate"?"

This particular Falwell moment was no more of a slur than Falwell's very public antisemitism or the gay-hating teletubby waving insanity. What made me find this the vilest was the timing of it. It was something like two days later. Do you remember what you felt like on September 13th? I do. I was in NO MOOD to hear that sort of shit.

Others may have been saying similar things then or soon after but Falwell's finger pointing was the first I had heard. My impression has always been that Falwell "broke the seal" on the country's internal blaming. Falwell's words were ill timed and hateful. They hinted at a reaction I had already been expecting immediately after - that the right wing elements in power would use the attacks as an excuse to justify imperialism abroad and to forgive totalitarian trends domestically. I know Falwell caught shit for saying what he said, and that was something of a relief, but I couldn't help comparing the scale and duration of the response to Falwell with the enduring strong reactions to Ward Churchill (whose essay left me feeling supremely irritated not specifically for the claims he made but for the cheeky babyboomer contrarian tone in which he made them).

The country liked Falwell it seems. It's hard for me to say that from here in my state where such open bigotry is at least seen as tacky and where such open declarations of personal relationships with god are enough to make most people back away slowly lest they frighten the crazy lady. But this is a small state folks. And when CT looks like a beacon of tolerance and sense, reason and equality, you know that we are just totally fucked.

Last thoughts on the deceased douchebag:
Falwell may not have been as out there as some of the hyper-neo-christofascists who are coming up now (e.g. I don't recall hearing Falwell speaking in tongues as a matter of routine), however I firmly believe that without Falwell's Moral Majority movement, the new wave of theocratic nutjobs would not have been able to gain the widespread public acceptance it enjoys today.

Leaving you with this wacky christo-fascist moment, courtesy of Sacha Baron Cohen.