If you gave Jerry Falwell an enema, he'd be buried in a matchbox."With room to spare.
As for Hitchens' (and my) "unkind" comments and their alleged affect on Falwell's family, I have a story. On September 11, a gay steward called his long-time partner/husband in what would be their last conversation. A short time later, his plane smashed into the WTC. What remained of his body had not even cooled to ambient before that sick, twisted snake-oil salesman had declared that the gay steward was partially to blame for the largest terrorist attack in American history...simply by being gay.
Baby Jesus ignores how his side's superstitious nonsense affects others (personally or through national policies that make condoms somehow worse than HIV); trivializes, scorns, and mocks those who recoil in horror at their callous, grotesque "faith-based" statements and initiatives or their unethical, anti-scientific, disastrous religiosity; but then demands that the same people whom the "Moral Majority" attacks as sinful, amoral, anti-American reprobates respect their dead because they were people of faith who did some good things sometime. If that's all it took to get "respect" in public discourse, few people would ever be criticized posthumously. All we could say of Hitler was that he built some nice schools and public infrastructure before making some unwise national and ethnic policy decisions.
Wow. Mr. Hitchens hits the nail perfectly. As for Jerry Falwell's family being upset by "unkind" comments - well, then don't read them. Mr. Falwell showed no "Christian" compassion for the for the families of the September 11th victims, for starters. And his family (and their delicate sensibilities) have been living off the proceeds from Mr. Falwell's "preaching" for quite a long time. So perhaps they should keep in mind Galatians vi. 7: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
ReplyDeleteI listened in on Baby Jesus' radio show today, and he and his callers were making the claim that only Christians were subject to this kind of posthumous ridicule. He then said that if Ann Coulter had said something similar of a liberal, it would not be forgiven by the mainstream press.
ReplyDeleteAnn Coulter has written that "believers" can get a chuckle out of the thought that Richard Dawkins will go to hell, an ETERNAL TORTURE CHAMBER!!!
They writhe in glee at the thought of you and I undergoing a sentence none of us would pass on an ill-tempered dog, but THEY have the moral authority when it comes to passing earthly judgment on the ethics of the dead? Blow me, Sean!