I'm Not Mourning for Jerry Falwell

According to CNN, Samantha Krieger has that the late infamous televangelist Jerry Falwell was "was a great leader and hero."

I am not terribly sure that this is a reasonable sentiment. Those of us unfortunate enough to have been paying attention to popular media about a month after 9/11 may remember Reverend Falwell's gloriously outlandish tirade about feminists, abortion, and the ACLU being more causative of 9/11 than, er, terrorists. His hasty backpedaling the following day does not redeem him in my heart, it merely reveals him to be dishonest.

His 1980 book "Listen, America!" (easily his best-selling; it earned him more than any of his subsequent books, even without accounting for inflation) lists abortion, liberalism, social welfare, drugs, and homosexuality as great evils plaguing the United States. He does not blame abundant firearms, the enormous gap between the rich and the poor, voter apathy, etc... he spouts the Republican party line and expects us to believe that the Jesus of the New Testament was anti-welfare. It worked.

His egregious lawsuit against Larry Flint and Hustler magazine ($50 million) was obviously an attempt to steal more than recompense for the libel he wanted the Supreme Court to think was being printed against him. What he wanted was to destroy a publishing house that he saw as threatening to the principles of the theocracy he would struggle for his entire life.

This was a man who blamed 9/11 on feminism and who has stated that he thinks that there will be a festival in heaven on the day that homosexuality is destroyed.