Everyone knows by now: Old Man Falwell has kicked the bucket. Common courtesy dictates that respect should be shown someone when he died, but Jerry Falwell was neither common nor courteous, so I feel little compulsion to give him anything that isn't warranted, especially something so important as respect. Let's be honest: the man was a douche bag.
Other users have already catalogued his "greatest hits,"so I'm not going to bother repeating them. But the deaths of political figures are usually prime time for whitewashing their history, and we should have none of that. He was a bully, a religious crank with too deep connections and convictions, and one of the primary enablers of the Reagan Revolution, which planted the seeds of religious fundamentalism in U.S. politics that have born their bitter fruit today. He was a stone-age, homophobic, disgusting louse; about the only good thing to be said about him is that he was on Fred Phelps' shit list, but so was everybody else.
Falwell's family may be hurt by harsh words they may hear being said about their patriarch even after he's dead, and they should be; he was their father/husband, after all. But they should not be surprised. He courted controversy by demonizing whole segments of the American population. He was a bigot, through and through. If they are so concerned about what is being said about him, maybe they should have been concerned with what he said and stopped him from putting his foot in his mouth as he so often did.
Besides, they can find all the bullshit lionizing they need from politicians. Most egregiously John McCain, who once referred to him as an "agent of intolerance" and has sinced cozied up to him and his Liberty University as he makes another bid for the presidency, today eulogized/rationalized him as "a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country." That's a fancy way to euphemize a man who blamed 9/11 on gays, pagans, feminists, and the ACLU. Dogshit would have sufficed just as well.
If there is a Hell, Jerry Falwell had better be there; if he's in Heaven, then God send me to the lake of fire when I die, because I wouldn't want to share real estate with such a vile sack of asshole. More likely he's simply dead, with no spirit to go anywhere or be reincarnated. Good riddance. I don't celebrate people's deaths, but I am certainly glad this vector of the fundamentalist meme is no longer with us.
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Pretty much.
Excellent use of profanity to punctuate the points! Humerous and at the same time almost artistic!