George misses Jerry
Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of Jerry Falwell, a man who cherished faith, family, and freedom…Jerry lived a life of faith and called upon men and women of all backgrounds to believe in God…
Well, that’s one (major) reason atheists of the assertive type (for want of a better term) (even Anthony Gottlieb calls us ‘militant’ atheists, which I think is both pejorative and inaccurate, and unbecoming to a philosopher) get exasperated with theists of the assertive type. We don’t think grown-up people ought to ‘call upon’ people to believe in God, because there is no good reason to think ‘God’ exists, so calling upon us to believe in God amounts to calling upon us to abandon rational thought, and we don’t think that is a good or justified call.
Then there’s the alliterative faith, family, and freedom triplet; Bush’s idea of virtue. He said something similar at Miami Dade College a couple of weeks ago; similar but with an important difference:
At Miami Dade, you know firsthand the contributions that immigrants make to our country. You see every day the values of hard work, and family, and faith that immigrants bring.
Freedom swapped for hard work. Well duh – that’s what immigrants are for: to work hard at crap jobs for crap pay with crap benefits and crap protections; naturally Bush talks up hard work when talking to an audience of immigrants, despite not being famous for working hard himself. Hard work, family, and faith: the ideal package for a docile labour pool. And the core duo, faith and family, are the basic reactionary program: one the enemy of free independent critical thought, the other a code for hostility to freedom, independence and autonomy for women. No doubt it never crossed Bush’s mind that there is a tension between the valorization of ‘faith’ and freedom; that faith in some ways limits and interferes with freedom; and especially that some people who ‘live lives of faith’ and ‘call upon people to believe in God’ decidedly use ‘faith’ as a weapon to smash any freedoms they don’t like. But it should have. It’s ludicrous to say Jerry Falwell cherished freedom.
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 [9/11] happen.’
AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.
I listen to feminists and all these radical gals. … These women just need a man in the house. That’s all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home.
Timothy Noah issued a slightly less emollient press release.
God, they say, is love, but the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died May 15, hit the jackpot trafficking in small-minded condemnation…On news of Falwell’s death, McCain said in a statement, “Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country.” Nonsense. He was a bigot, a reactionary, a liar, and a fool.
And public officials should not be pretending otherwise. Fred Phelps is not a peppery but essentially decent guy; Pat Robertson is not a lamp unto our feet; and Jerry Falwell was not a man of distinguished accomplishment. Tell the truth, you schmucks.
Yes, the word militant is definitely reserved for atheist. Am I a militant gardener because I pull out weeds? No, though I would be if I sprayed my patch with Agent Orange. Am I a militant cyclist because I cycle and tell anyone who listens what a good idea it would be if everybody cycled? No, but I would be if I was blowing up cars. But a militant atheist seems to be someone who says OUT LOUD and IN PUBLIC that they are an atheist. I wouldn’t call a Christian who goes to church a militant Christian.
It’s difficult for those of few of us us on this side of the Atlantic who have even heard of Falwell to think of him as other than a cartoon character, a sort of dumbed down Elmer Gantry but without the charm, wit and warmth.
The open and unrestrained exultation at his death which so many blogs are filled with brings home that he really was a significant political figure who had a real, and malign, impact on people’s lives. I can’t think of an equivalent figure in Europe.
Over at Scienceblogs there are a few posts concerning Hitchens’ observations about Falwell on CNN. Several comments took issue with his speculation about whether or not Falwell actually believed his fundamentalist rot. I’d have to say he did in a complacent and mindless way.
How about adding fatuousness to faith, family, and freedom?
From an old Firesign Theater radio skit:
“the Reverend Jerry Foulmouth and his Mental Minority…”
I sort of think of him as a cartoon figure too, but one with real influence nevertheless. It’s an embarrassing feature of US life that cartoonish people can have very real influence. Reagan, Arnie, Sonny Bono, Aimee Semple McPherson, Bush, Pat Robertson…it’s a long list.
An equivalent figure in Europe – well there is the pope! Not this particular pope; any pope. Cartoonish job and outfit; massive influence.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon3.html
Faith, family and freedom… Rather redolent of “Kinder, Kirke, Kuche,” isn’t it? The Nazis didn’t include freedom in their triplet because they didn’t really believe in it (except for the kind of “freiheit” that the camps offered, via death). George Bush and his cronies, however, do believe in it — for the owners of capital. The rest of us get the triplet that has the “hard work” part.
OB, that’s a brilliant observation that “family” is code for what amounts to controlling women. Very true.
Yes, we can be a cartoonish people. I have always thought of the “professional wrestling” that is so popular with some as human cartoons. With the outlandish costumes, one dimensional characters, simple good vs. evil plotlines… wait I forget, was I talking about pro wrestling or televangelists?
Yes indeed it is redolent of Kinder, Kirke, Kuche, which is one reason I hate it so much. Reactionary bastards…mutter mutter mutter swear.
Dave W: “outlandish costumes, one dimensional characters, simple good vs. evil plotlines…”
Pro wrestlers, televangelists and warmongers. Oh my!
I have long believed that “family values” is a code for “A woman is no problem if you keep her barefoot in winter, and pregnant in summer.”
Elliott, the converse of that is “A man is no problem as long as you keep him working hard in the daytime, and just keep him hard at night.”
OB: “It’s an embarrassing feature of US life that cartoonish people can have very real influence.”
You might add a few names to THAT list! (the Governator, Michael Moore, Rosie O’Donnell, Maureen Dowd).
Problem is that cartoonish ideas are easier for the media to re-sell, easier to lampoon or excoriate if you are that way inclined – and thus the media pros can generate excitement and attention. If the major networks and papers operated in the bigger picture (perhaps like The Economist in the old days), you might get better contributions to public debate. But that might entail a different reward system.
“Move a man’s plate twelve inches to the left, and watch him starve to death.”
Is it because I’m from Ukraine? I don’t understand the quote about the plate at all.
And Maureen Dowd a cartoon? Are you joking? I don’t get it.
>>”Move a man’s plate twelve inches to the left, and watch him starve to death.”
>>Is it because I’m from Ukraine? I don’t understand the quote about the plate at all.
ROFLMAO, as they say on the interweb…
Me, when I hear “faith, family, and freedom…” I get this strange impulse to straighten my right arm… Can’t find the black leather glove right now, though…
The plate comment is from women who are married to men. It relates to two things: one is expecting to have the food cooked for you by a woman (any woman), and the other is that men don’t LOOK until they find something. Instead they say ‘Mum, have you seen my car keys?’ and expect their wife or mother to save them the trouble of looking and thinking. Women then start saying things like ‘Did you have a good look, or a BOY look?’
You and I know that we wouldn’t starve to death if they didn’t put the food in front of us; and we would find our own keys eventually too.
And Maureen Dowd is a cartoon to certain ‘right-wing death beasts’. I have only read lampooning extracts of her work, since most of it is behind the pay screen.
I saw ‘Jerry’ in the head and then ‘deeply saddened by the death of’ in the first quote and thought, Oh, shit, no! It’s Stangroom! (I mean, if I’d seen the same thing on Harry’s Place, say, it wouldn’t have had that effect.) Then I realised this twit FoulWell had croaked yesterday and that I’d filed it mentally under ‘Good news’, done a quick jig, and then moved on and promptly forgotten about it, realising that in America one fundie creep down doesn’t mean much when they can be measured by the ton. Talking of scrupulously accurate statistics like that one, did you know that if you laid all the fundamentalist Christians in America down on the ground, head to toe, they’d cause a lot less trouble?
I feel sorry for all his blinkered, unquestioning followers [jus’ remember folks – they teach ya ta have a “childlike faith”]…who’s going to tell them what exactly they’re supposed to be condemning today?
lost, all lost and alone, the poor, poor lambs…
BYEEE!
“I can’t think of an equivalent figure in Europe”.
I can…He resides in Northern Ireland!
Judging from the majority of comments in the above BYEEE post, definite comparisons can be drawn between the two cartoonish characters.
You’re right, Marie-Therese. Poor Jerry was really “Paisley-lite”. Big Ian could get a crowd on its feet to go burn out entire neighborhoods (BTW he argued the reason the “papists'” houses burned was because they were storing petrol bombs in the basement). He has few peers in the art of bigotry.
I saw him give a sermon in Ballymena in ’77. He began with “I have hated god’s enemies with a perfect hate..”
Lovely, eh?
Ms. Dowd is not only disliked by right-wingers; a lot of the U.S. left tends to snicker at her writings, too, because they feel that she tends to confine her remarks to gossipy, superficial aspects of politics. Also, they’re not very sympathetic to her complaint that she can’t find a man because she’s too smart and scares them all away.
Mind you, there is probably some sexism in that judgment. I’m of two minds about her myself; some of what she says is spot on and rather witty, but she can also be quite silly.
Surely if a commentator’s stock-in-trade is humour, there will be some who don’t find everything they write funny? If Dowd was purporting to do anything else besides write humorous observations, complaining that not all her observations are serious might have more substance.
“He has few peers in the art of bigotry”.
Barney, he surely does indeed!
See: Blanket
“Ian Paisley’s church for example believes that the Roman Catholic Church is the ‘whore of Babylon’ or ‘mother of Harlots’ outlined in Chapters 17 and 18 of the Book of Revelation in the Bible. The Pope is believed to be the ‘anti-Christ’ mentioned in Revelation and Catholics are therefore by logical extension seen to be the followers of the anti- Christ or deceived by the ‘system of the Anti-Christ’. Ian Paisley has always believed that the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican are involved in machinations to bring about the destruction of Protestantism. He in the past has alleged that ‘Rome’ or the Vatican was colluding with the Dublin Government to overthrow the Protestant people of Ulster…
“God, they say, is love, but the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died May 15, hit the jackpot trafficking in small-minded condemnation…Just like Ian, the 21st Century Dinosaur.
Dave, I’m glad I provided you with some humor with my query about the plate quote, but it would have been nice if you had resolved my puzzlement. ChrisPer was kind enough to answer my question, but still I’m not sure I get it.
No hard feelings; I usually agree with you.
“Tell the truth, you schmucks”.
Irish politicians seemingly do…
“When President Erskine Childers (a man who stood up to Haughey) died in 1974, Haughey was asked why he was attending the funeral. He replied;
“To make sure the fucker is well planted”
He, neither was not a lamp unto our feet? As was Jerry the Preacher et al.
That’s brilliant, Marie-Therese!
Here’s a good article clarifying why anyone with the slightest liberal bent should be repelled by Falwell’s legacy:
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10806.html
It’s basically just a chronology of the right reverend’s reprehenible deeds. It ends like this:
“September 2001: Falwell blames Americans for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “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.’”
November 2005: Falwell spearheads campaign to resist “war on Christmas.”
February 2007: Falwell describes global warming as a conspiracy orchestrated by Satan, liberals, and The Weather Channel.
Say what you will about the man and his life, but he leaves behind a colorful background.”
Sorry to be a pedant about German…but the phrase is “Kinder, Küche, Kirche.”
Though I guess the order can vary, the correct German term for ‘church’ is always die Kirche.
Thanks, RA. Pedants welcome.
The old memory isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps it’s time I stopped making gin in the bathtub.
No, pedantry is good. I did a quick Google yesterday to try to grab a version with the umlaut, but didn’t see one and didn’t take the time to persist; and overlooked Kirche. Kirke is how people who have one German and one Scots parent spell it.
“Kirke” is very Scots sounding. I had a grandfather from Scotland who, despite many years here, never stopped referring to the church as “the kirk.” He was also a rather feisty atheist fond of telling people that when you die, “you go in the ground and you stay there.”
Cool guy, really.
Scots atheists rule.
Hey Pyotr, sorry about that, it was the “is it because” meme – google “Ali G” for more info…
Also, not getting a joke about being dumb is, well, just funny…. But if it makes you feel any better, I’m bald, ugly and have no friends – and I’m not even Dick Cheney. Ba-boom!
Dave, you’re funny, my friend. Thanks for the explanation. I went back and re-read stuff, and I was laughing, too.
FWIW, I have lots of hair, I’m kinda handsome (in a Slavic way), and I too have no friends (unless you count my wife).
I kiss you (cheek only).
Pyotr,
Your “I kiss you” thing reminded me of this guy: http://www.ikissyou.org
He’s like the ur-Borat. I saw him several years ago on The Daily Show; one of their most hilarious segments ever.
RA, I’m pretty fluent in Murkan after nearly 20 years here, and I don’t actually say, “I kiss you.” I just think it’s funny, especially with the “cheek only” bit, so no one thinks I may be gay (god forbid!). In fact, I think I might have gotten the line from the ur-Borat that you linked to.
It is true, though, that there was a lot of that man-kissing in Ukraine when I was growing up. I was good at avoiding it.
Pyotr,
I didn’t think you actually said “I kiss you.”
It is funny.
RA, you’re a woman aren’t you?
Why does the distaff side eschew names that reveal their gender?
RA/OB, I came upon the following when surfing same.
RE: Kinder, Küche, Kirche eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee? Ach aye am sorry, but religiously, though eeeeeeeeeeeeee on a churchy, no, really Church note without meaning to
display excessive attention to precisian pedanticism etymology.
As a common noun, kirk is the Scots and Scottish English word for
‘church’, attested as a noun from the 14th century onwards, but as an element in placenames much earlier. Both words, kirk and church, derive from the Koine Greek κυριακόν (δωμα) (kyriakon (dōma)) meaning Lord’s (house), which was borrowed into the Germanic languages in late antiquity, possibly in the course of the Gothic missions. (Only a connection with the idiosyncrasies of Gothic explains how a Greek neuter noun became a Germanic feminine.) Whereas church displays Old English palatalisation, kirk is likely to be a loanword from Old Norse and thus has the original mainland Germanic consonants. Compare cognates: Icelandic & Faroese kirkja; Swedish kyrka; Norwegian & Danish kirke; German Kirche; Dutch kerk; Frisian tsjerke; and borrowed into non-Germanic languages: Estonian kirik and Finnish kirkko.
The Church of Scotland
As a proper noun, The Kirk is an informal name for the Church of Scotland, the country’s national church. The Kirk of Scotland was in official use as the name of the Church of Scotland until the 17th century, and still today the term is frequently used in the press and everyday speech, though seldom in the Church’s own literature. However, Kirk Session is still the standard term in church law for the court of elders in the local parish, both in the Church of Scotland and in any of the other Scottish Presbyterian denominations.
Kilnamona,= as Gaeilge = Cill na Móna, = Church of the Bog, or, Church of the Rough Land …
Kill, Killarney, Killiney, Kildare etc, etc are “Cill” anglocised name-places that one comes across throughout the whole of the Emerald Isle.
Pyotr,
I’m a woman, yes. The R = Rebecca. I don’t know why I usually use initials instead of my gender-identifying name. Unnecessary paranoia is always a possibility.
RA:
Good on ya for stepping up. I don’t know how I knew, but something in your previous response told me.
Stick around; more women are needed here.
Doug as far as I was aware Falwell apologised unreservedly for his 911 comments yet people still seem to hang this on him?
Richard:
I apologized unreservedly for telling my ex-girlfriend that she was a cheap whore for having lunch with a male colleague, but she still won’t sleep with me anymore. She insists on hanging this on me. Can you offer any advice?
Sorry Doug I am on your girl friends side I wouldnt sleep with you either!my point with Falwell is that people always bring up his 911 remarks but never his unreserved apology,I and probably most other people said things after 9/11 that they probably regret.
Richard, I don’t care what kind of abuse these guys hurl at you. You’re precious! Please don’t leave us. Some of us women feel a bit intimidated by all these smart guys writing in here, but you make us feel much more at ease. Thanks!
I guess the point is, Richard, that Falwell is a politician. We are right to see his initial outburst as a reflection of his true feelings and to distrust his “apology” for what it is-political expediency. Especially given a long, long history of equally vile statements and actions. Harsh and judgemental? Perhaps. But I, for one, am not going to apologize for expressing a quite negative opinion about the man.
No, I think the point is the one Doug made. Apology doesn’t necessarily simply cancel anything and everything. It depends. We can say some things in the heat of anger and then repair some of the damage by apologizing, but there are limits.
Besides, Falwell didn’t “apologize unreservedly” – his apology was in fact quite reserved.
It was also made under pressure, so, as Brian says, probably more expedient than genuinely regretful. At any rate the point is that he blurted out what he really thought, and an apology doesn’t convince all of us that he didn’t really think that; I think he really did think that; therefore I feel zero obligation to ‘forgive’ him in a loving Christian manner.
Except that’s not really the point either – I said that in reaction to Richard’s comments on Falwell’s apology. But the point is not about forgiveness; the point is about the merit of his ideas, and his way of arriving at them. The point is not about the state of his soul, or even his conscience (which no longer exists, obviously), it’s about the harm he did and continues to do; it’s about effects. I have no more desire to punish him than I have to forgive him; what I want to do is say what’s wrong and dangerous and harmful about the way he thought and the things he said. That’s all.
As to Fawells ideas O.B.they were crap apart from the Jesus is cool bit,I saw him on Lary King after the 9/11 comments and I thought his apology was sincere(but then again that will cut no ice because I am a right wing nut).
I perform a very valuable funtion at this site Sangora I alow every other person in the chat room not to feel that stupid(helps when you are mixing it with p.h.d.s).
Richard, you are indeed invaluable. If you didn’t exist, someone would need to invent you. Don’t let these lefty-egalitarian-smart alecs chase you off.