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Yep. karma indeed. Normally, I do not revel in the misfortune of others.

But DAMn, did I hate that guy

Midnight wrote:

PariahPoet wrote:He was a jerk. He came here with his goons and crashed a funeral in my town.
So many people in town lined the streets as the funeral procession went by to show their support of the family.
People were livid when they heard this moron was planning on coming here, there was a lot of protest against him and posse.

Did Falwell do that sort of stuff too? Most of the time it's Fred Phelps that gets associated with that sort of batcrap insanity.

The main memory of Falwell in these parts is when he ended up at a debate (I think it was an Oxford Union debate, but I may be misremembering... this was 20 or so years ago) over in Britain (I think), against David Lange, the local prime minister. Falwell must have thought he was going to be debating against some hick from the middle of nowhere (this was back when most of the world couldn't find New Zealand on a map) but as it turned out Lange was actually a quick-witted academic with an unfortunate tendency to come up with a smart retort even when one wasn't really warranted. Falwell exited the debate somewhat shell-shocked with phrases such as "I can smell the uranium on your breath!" ringing in his ears...

Ok, wait, I was thinking about the wrong guy. What did Fallwell do then?

PariahPoet wrote:

Midnight wrote:

PariahPoet wrote:He was a jerk. He came here with his goons and crashed a funeral in my town.
So many people in town lined the streets as the funeral procession went by to show their support of the family.
People were livid when they heard this moron was planning on coming here, there was a lot of protest against him and posse.

Did Falwell do that sort of stuff too? Most of the time it's Fred Phelps that gets associated with that sort of batcrap insanity.

The main memory of Falwell in these parts is when he ended up at a debate (I think it was an Oxford Union debate, but I may be misremembering... this was 20 or so years ago) over in Britain (I think), against David Lange, the local prime minister. Falwell must have thought he was going to be debating against some hick from the middle of nowhere (this was back when most of the world couldn't find New Zealand on a map) but as it turned out Lange was actually a quick-witted academic with an unfortunate tendency to come up with a smart retort even when one wasn't really warranted. Falwell exited the debate somewhat shell-shocked with phrases such as "I can smell the uranium on your breath!" ringing in his ears...

Ok, wait, I was thinking about the wrong guy. What did Fallwell do then?

Really? If that's the case, then I retract my previous statement.

Yeah likewise. Now I want to know what was with the dude that everyone seems to hate him so much. From what I've heard on the news, he sounded like a relatively decent person.

PariahPoet wrote:Yeah likewise. Now I want to know what was with the dude that everyone seems to hate him so much. From what I've heard on the news, he sounded like a relatively decent person.

Well, Wikiquote has some stuff by him. Just scanning through it now, he seems for the most part more crazy than dickish. Here's what he said about the terrorist attacks, as mentioned earlier:

Jerry Falwell wrote: * And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. 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.
o Remarks to Pat Robertson after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on The 700 Club (13 September 2001) (audio recording); more at "Falwell and Above" at Snopes.com Falwell later told CNN:

I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize.

* CNN (14 September 2001)

At least he apologized, but right before it he was clearly lying.

PariahPoet wrote:Yeah likewise. Now I want to know what was with the dude that everyone seems to hate him so much. From what I've heard on the news, he sounded like a relatively decent person.

He never went as far as Fred Phelps did, but he was still very outspoken and fanatical. He founded the Moral Majority, the organization which effectively turned the Republican Party into the party of elitist fundamentalists that it is today.

He really was a lot like Fred Phelps. Just not quite as blatant about it.

Hmm...said on the news that he also created a large shelter for teen mothers.
Sounds like he did a few good things, too bad he got off track by blaming people. He could've done better. There seem to be a couple things I agree with him about, but I hate people who put others down for believing differently than themselves.

PariahPoet wrote:I hate people who put others down for believing differently than themselves.

Are you referring to anyone in particular? When I said he seemed crazy, I was talking about things like "Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them". That quote is something I just don't understand, and unfortunately I have no way of finding the context. The wording and the general meaning are way out of whack. Also, "And the fact that John Kerry would not support a federal marriage amendment [prohibiting gay marriage], it equates in our minds as someone 150 years ago saying I'm personally opposed to slavery, but if my neighbor wants to own one or two that's OK. We don't buy that." just pisses me off. Gay marriage is NOT comparable to slavery.

Still, from the sound of that teen mothers shelter, he sounds like he had good intentions. And I mean real good intentions, not like that protesting against gay people outside military funerals bullshit. If he did things like that routinely, I can buy that he had decency in him. It takes a somewhat decent person to step outside their ideas to help others, and based on his other ideas it sounds like that's what he was doing there.

Some of his ideas still bother me a bit, though. He definitely said some messed up things, according to Wikiquote.

I heard wikapedia is not the most reliable source...
A college professor told me that for a while the definition of claustrophobia on wiki was "the fear of Santa Claus"...

cumulusprotagonist wrote:I heard wikapedia is not the most reliable source...
A college professor told me that for a while the definition of claustrophobia on wiki was "the fear of Santa Claus"...

Believing things on Wikipedia is alright, in my opinion, if either a.) they have a source, or b.) aren't completely out there, like your Santa Claus example. They generally police their site for vandalism, from what I've seen, in addition to pointing out when something being claimed needs a source. Of course they can't cover everything, but to just decide that everything on Wikipedia is completely false just because it's user-submitted seems illogical to the site.

Now, as for Wikiquote, well, the article I linked to, anyway, most of the quotes have sources, and when there isn't one, they put it in a section for unsourced quotes.

I know that a lot of it is true but the professor said because it is possible some of it is not true you could not use it as a cited source for a research paper...

cumulusprotagonist wrote:I know that a lot of it is true but the professor said because it is possible some of it is not true you could not use it as a cited source for a research paper...

Well, I guess I could understand that. I think we have a teacher on this site who would agree with him/her.

I really wish I could have seen the entry for Wikipedia that said that claustrophobia was a fear of Santa Claus.

PariahPoet wrote:Hmm...said on the news that he also created a large shelter for teen mothers.

It's called a publicity stunt.

Terastas wrote:

PariahPoet wrote:Hmm...said on the news that he also created a large shelter for teen mothers.

It's called a publicity stunt.

Ah, so it WASN'T a routine kind of thing... I was afraid of that.

*nods* Jerry Falwell was in the business of religion (emphasis on the word 'business'). In the business, it's important to keep up appearances by supporting worthy causes, but the primary concern is still convincing millions of people that the only way to obtain salvation is to support their platform and give them money.

Jerry Falwell did do some good things, but he did it with money that he could spare.

I was in Washington DC when it happened. I was there for LiveSTRONG Day as part of the Oregon state delegation. We were kind of worried that his death would be what everyone would be talking about the next day and that it would steal our thunder, but we rose to the challenge.

Anyway, I'm not in DC anymore, so I can take the diplomatic game face off now...

Jerry Falwell was a prick 'n a half; he wasn't as bad as Phelps (who can have child abuse added to his list of excesses), but in some ways he was worse. It's a case of the devil you know versus the one you can't see. Falwell was this country's eminence grise, meaning he was a religious patriarch who puppeted politicians. I was scared he'd run for Congress, governor and maybe even President someday — but the way he was playing up until he died he didn't have to.

He had his tentacles in anterior orifices on both sides of the aisle. He was pally with Gore, both Al and Tipper, as well as Bush, Reagan, and was a factor in Kerry not being President. Kerry was Catholic so he wouldn't bow and scrape to him, and Falwell's followers turned against him in droves. He's also one of the bigger reasons the Stem Cell Enhancement Act was vetoed and millions, here and around the world, were literally stiffed because of that.

I was furious when I heard his comments that gays, lesbians, pagans, the ACLU, civil libertarians, feminists and abortionists being the cause of 9/11. I wanted to skin and throw him to the Taliban for lantern fuel. However, his political meddling was what kept me hating him for 20 some-odd years. He tried to turn us into a theocracy — he called America a Judaeo-Christian country which we're not (if it's anything, it's Masonic which is rooted in Egyptian Paganism) — and worse, he did it from behind a curtain. Thank you, I LIKE living in a country where I can choose Who, when, and why to pray to.

Thank God...and Goddess, and the Gods...he's GONE. So, which level of Hell (according to Dante's Inferno) do you think he's in?

Vrik summed it up well enough. Fred Phelps is a more despicable person, but he's basically just a dirty old man.

Jerry Falwell practically reinvented political corruption. Everything you hate about the Republican party was his doing.

I am not generally one to make light of other peoples' demise. But, of Falwell's death, I can only express relief.

I am surprised at how many people here don't know who he was. He was one of the most aggressive of the reactionary Fundamentalist Christian ministers; he founded the Moral Majority and fought veheminently against homosexual rights, abortion access rights, and other matters I consider essential towards human evolution. Indeed, he fought against the teaching OF evolution. He was so radical that he once charged that one of the Teletubbies was emulating homosexual culture, implying that it was somehow immoral to employ imagery that even looked gay. He blamed homosexuals, minority religions including my own faith of Wicca, abortion rights advocates, and the general forward momentum of open-mindedness in America for the September 11th attacks and later Hurricane Katrina. Of Katrina, I can only blame air pressure and weather patterns, though collective human activity leading to global warming is a plausible culprit. But of the September 11th attacks, it is well established that the party responsible was a group of religious fanatics, spouting off about how great God is, about how God wants the world to be one certain way, and how all who oppose this vision must be destroyed--in short, people just like the late Jerry Falwell.

I'm not one normally to speak ill of the dead. But, of Falwell, I can now say that it's his turn to answer to God. I'm just glad for both my sake and his that he couldn't possibly have been right, as the vision of God he so violently pushed was internally logically impossible.

As for rewriting my stories, it's a trade-off with which I can live. Sadly, there's still plenty more infected with the viral meme of an aggressive, polarized religion. I just change the name.

For more evidence on how big of a sack of sh*t Fallwell was look at the quotes in the linked-to comic strip and the post below it:
http://www.monkeylaw.org/index.php