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On a Passing
By bk | May 19, 2007 22:06
A friend of mine asked me why I hadn’t commented on the passing of Jerry Falwell. The only answer I had was ‘my mother taught me if I can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’ and I left it at that. Yet, after reading and viewing so many opinions from my fellow bloggers, I wanted to bring a few here.
While I can share empathy for a grieving family, I don’t feel the world is at any great loss from this. I don’t think I could phrase things the way Christopher Hitchens does, but I tend to agree with him (see below). On of my great fears is that there will be hundreds more. One of my favorite bumper stickers is “the Christian Right is neither” and I add to that “the Moral Majority isn’t.”
Hitchens’ article elucidates the silly fact that in America crazy statements are tolerated just because the context is religion, and Falwell leveraged this fact to the extreme. I can’t always agree with the way Hitchens phrases things, but I can certainly support the spirit.
UPDATE: Mark Morford at SF Gate did a great job of allowing Falwell to speak for himself by compiling a number of Falwell’s best quotes. One of my favorites:
“Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.”
But they are all so funny I just can’t pick one - read them all, unbelievable that people would actually look up to this guy. Oh, and this little bit of lovely non-sequitur:
“The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That’s like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight.”
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