{"id":826,"date":"2007-05-16T07:52:23","date_gmt":"2007-05-16T13:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/05\/16\/fallwell\/"},"modified":"2007-05-17T13:47:51","modified_gmt":"2007-05-17T19:47:51","slug":"fallwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=826","title":{"rendered":"Falwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like lots of Americans, including many Republicans, I was of many minds about Jerry Fallwell.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.
\nI sat quietly for just a moment, wondering – how do I answer this? That I don’t really giggle over much of anyone <\/em>dying? That many of Falwell’s stances were reported grossly out of context (as is the norm for mainstream Christian fundamentalists)?<\/p>\n

I figured “why not play the gaffe card?”<\/p>\n

“Ayep”, I said. “And as a firebreathing Christian conservative Republican, <\/em>I didn’t agree with everything he said, but he certainly was an interesting character”.<\/p>\n

She shrivelled just a bit.<\/p>\n

I left it at that.<\/p>\n

Miss O’Hara took it a bit further<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/font>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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I look at some of the dimbulb leftybloggers who are erupting in joy today, and all I can feel is depressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,20,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-democrats","category-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}