Like lots of Americans, including many Republicans, I was of many minds about Jerry Fallwell.
He was one of the boogeymen I held before me as I tried (and eventually failed) ton convince myself to remain a liberal Democrat in high school and college. His “Moral Majority” struck me as…well, basically right about most things, but the group’s name struck me as a bit immodest for my austere Scandinavian tastes.
But he certainly helped focus attention on issues that were and are vital to Christian conservatives. And the media, inflamed by the likes of Jim Bakker and the nearly-irredeemable Pat Robertson, bayed and cavilled about him like he was a pelt they wanted to collect. Many of his worst “gaffes” were taken in a context that was, to be honest, grossly mangled.
I was sitting in a coffee shop yesterday enjoying a rare day off when I heard the news. A painfully austere-looking woman next to me was reading the news on her laptop. “Jerry Falwell is dead!”, she said to me – exhuberantly, breaking into a happy little chuckle. Apparently she assumed that since we were in a liberal neighborhood, everyone she came into contact with would share her elation.
I sat quietly for just a moment, wondering – how do I answer this? That I don’t really giggle over much of anyone dying? That many of Falwell’s stances were reported grossly out of context (as is the norm for mainstream Christian fundamentalists)?
I figured “why not play the gaffe card?”
“Ayep”, I said. “And as a firebreathing Christian conservative Republican, I didn’t agree with everything he said, but he certainly was an interesting character”.
She shrivelled just a bit.
I left it at that.
Miss O’Hara took it a bit further:
As you know, Reverend Falwell passed away today. Like him or not, I am nothing short of appalled by the reactions we are seeing from some folks. I never really followed Falwell, so can’t say much about his doctrine, but there are way too many people spewing incredible buckets of hate toward this man. Yesterday I was unhappy that people actually care about Buttafuco/Fisher; tonight I just don’t understand how we’ve become so narcissistic that we can’t feel empathy for the family of someone who has died, or the deceased themselves. It isn’t as if he were, oh, shooting homosexuals point-blank like Che Guevara or actively planning to wipe another nation or two off the face of the earth like Ahdmadinejad. And even so, they are lost souls too.Nothing prepares me for the hate unleashed by people in our society, even when the object of that hate is suffering or dead or being abused. Certain pockets of our culture have marinated in hate and vulgarity so long they have no capacity to actually care for each other as human beings, no matter one’s creed. We’re no longer human, but just belief systems. Not exactly what God intended.
I look at some of the dimbulb leftybloggers who are erupting in joy today, and all I can feel is depressed.
Paul.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/05/08/rel6d.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_022607.htm
Would you like me to keep going or can you pull your head out of your ass enough to get it with three examples?
Paul cried,
Patent Dishonesty Foul
Then delivers this:
Developing a strategy to redeploy forces (yank them out as fast as possible) and developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions Bb>(bribe them to leave us alone)
Hey Paul. Do you see any dishonesty in what you did here?
How about summing up “developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions” by saying, “You mean like the 13 years of UN resolutions that Saddam completely ignored before The Great Rush to War?”
Any dishonesty there Paul?
angryclown Says:
Kind of like how the anti-Superman would have to come from Krypton, Dug. Colleen is sitting around waiting for the Bizarro World Christ who will fight the Battle of Armageddon with Jesus and all his pals. Of course that will only come after Colleen and all the other super-duper-Christians get raptured out of their socks up into the sky. It’s totally logical.
—- and, all of a sudden like, AC will profess an almost instantanious conversion to belief in alien abduction.
Paul.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/05/08/rel6d.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_022607.htm
Would you like me to keep going or can you pull your head out of your a55 enough to get it with three examples?
Paul cried,
Patent Dishonesty Foul
Then delivers this:
Developing a strategy to redeploy forces (yank them out as fast as possible) and developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions Bb>(bribe them to leave us alone)
Hey Paul. Do you see any dishonesty in what you did here?
How about summing up “developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions” by saying, “You mean like the 13 years of UN resolutions that Saddam completely ignored before The Great Rush to War?”
Any dishonesty there Paul?
Paul.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/05/08/rel6d.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_022607.htm
Would you like me to keep going or can you pull your head out of your butt enough to get it with three examples?
Paul cried,
Patent Dishonesty Foul
Then delivers this:
Developing a strategy to redeploy forces (yank them out as fast as possible) and developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions Bb>(bribe them to leave us alone)
Hey Paul. Do you see any dishonesty in what you did here?
How about summing up “developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions” by saying, “You mean like the 13 years of UN resolutions that Saddam completely ignored before The Great Rush to War?”
Any dishonesty there Paul?
Paul.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/05/08/rel6d.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_022607.htm
Would you like me to keep going or can you pull your head out of your a** enough to get it with three examples?
Paul cried,
Patent Dishonesty Foul
Then delivers this:
Developing a strategy to redeploy forces (yank them out as fast as possible) and developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions Bb>(bribe them to leave us alone)
Hey Paul. Do you see any dishonesty in what you did here?
How about summing up “developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions” by saying, “You mean like the 13 years of UN resolutions that Saddam completely ignored before The Great Rush to War?”
Any dishonesty there Paul?
Paul.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_022607.htm
Would you like me to keep going or can you pull your head out of your a** enough to get it with two examples?
Paul cried,
Patent Dishonesty Foul
Then delivers this:
Developing a strategy to redeploy forces (yank them out as fast as possible) and developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions Bb>(bribe them to leave us alone)
Hey Paul. Do you see any dishonesty in what you did here?
How about summing up “developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions” by saying, “You mean like the 13 years of UN resolutions that Saddam completely ignored before The Great Rush to War?”
Any dishonesty there Paul?
Paul.
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
Would you like me to keep going or can you pull your head out of your butt enough to get it with this examples?
I’d cite more but WordPress keeps screening out links.
Paul cried,
Patent Dishonesty Foul
Then delivers this:
Developing a strategy to redeploy forces (yank them out as fast as possible) and developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions Bb>(bribe them to leave us alone)
Hey Paul. Do you see any dishonesty in what you did here?
How about summing up “developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions” by saying, “You mean like the 13 years of UN resolutions that Saddam completely ignored before The Great Rush to War?”
Any dishonesty there Paul?
You mean the great rush to war that took 18 months, Doug?
I feel sorry for Paul. Super Doug has beat him mercilessly with the Club of Redundancy. It’s hard to believe that “…” could be repeated so effortlessly.
Doug asked:
“Let’s say just for kicks, we were to take everything that we know about the life and the teachings of that guys we called Jesus and from that assembled knowledge we created a religion around his teachings, his life etc. What would we call said religion Colleen?”
OK. I must be DUMB as well as scary (BOO!) but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
the better question is do you guys drink heavily as you do these circle-j blogs? Or does fatigue explain the decline from the mediocre starting point? And if so why not just get together in a bar and yell at each other in the old fashioned way – pshycoses too deep to get out of the room? Lost the memory of visual stimulation? –
It’s easy Colleen. If we took averything we knew about Jesus and built a religion around it, what would it be called?
Sorry about the multiple posts but when they didn’t appear, I figured they were filtered out. I tried changing the post to see if it would publish.
Terry said,
“You mean the great rush to war that took 18 months, Doug?”
No Terry. I’m talking about the dishonesty of taking what I said and simply vomiting back talking points. For example, I said,
“Developing a strategy to redeploy forces”
Paul puked out
(yank them out as fast as possible)
Paul is attempting to set up another strawman. He’s defined “strategy to redeploy” as “yank them out”.
How about this…?
I said,
“developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions”
Paul regurgitates,
(bribe them to leave us alone)
Again, Paul had set up another strawman. He’s defined “internationallly supported diplomatic solutions” as “bribe them to leave us alone”.
Rather than addressing the points and discussing or debating them, he offers a glimpse into his own limited capacity to comprehend then regurgitates back his myopic understanding of a complex issue. The funny thing is that he is apparently proud of the fact that he limited to using talking points to make an argument.
The same is true of taking “developing internationallly supported diplomatic solutions” then regurgitating, “You mean like the 13 years of UN resolutions that Saddam completely ignored before The Great Rush to War?”
No Paul, I mean developing internationallly supported diplomatic solutions. You know, what the State Department used to do?
coldeye:
Did you actually complain at one point about the level of discourse? Reading this:
“the better question is do you guys drink heavily as you do these circle-j blogs? Or does fatigue explain the decline from the mediocre starting point? And if so why not just get together in a bar and yell at each other in the old fashioned way – pshycoses too deep to get out of the room? Lost the memory of visual stimulation?”
I am wondering: is this how you propose to raise it? Wow.
Doug:
Given that you seem unwilling to expand on what you mean by:
“Developing a strategy to redeploy forces”
and
“developing internationallly supported diplomactic solutions”
except that it “doesn’t mean what Paul says it means”, I am not surprised that you cannot convince anyone of anything. It can’t be considered a straw man at all since you make people guess at exactly what you mean rather than even attempting to explaining it. You simply (and I do mean simply) repeat yourself. Not helpful.
Congratulations on one thing though: you cited something you referenced. I applaud you, sir.
Bet he fell well.
Troy;
You can raise the average by omitting those below it. So yes, if my hypothesis was right then a review of this thread by the multiple offenders, when sober, could prevent further abuses. Just read the two posts immediately ahead of mine, or pick the twelve best insults. It’s the Bickersons family reunion, when they’re down to the Fox Deluxe and Volkav vodka.
coldeye:
*shrug* I wasn’t the one complaining.