Pushing Rope: Jerry Falwell is Dead

Jerry Falwell died today. There is no way to talk about the man without mentioning the horrible things he did to polarize the country. Falwell was a Christian conservative of double standards. He said Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was far worse than the Mark Foley scandal.

Falwell: But this president -- it's like this Mark Foley thing -- that's not going to discourage any evangelicals I know from voting. We lived through Bill Clinton, and this situation with Foley is minuscule in comparison.

Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed 9-11 on the ACLU, homosexuals and the pro-choice movement. Falwell praised people who were advocating the lynching of the ACLU.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. 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'.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.

JERRY FALWELL: Amen. Pat, did you notice yesterday? The ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, the People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang 'God Bless America' and said 'let the ACLU be hanged'. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time- calling upon God.

The most damning example of Falwell's callousness at Ground Zero after the 9-11 attacks.

After those comments, Kuo asked whether Karl Rove still wanted to let Falwell attend the National Service.

Even while Ground Zero was still burning, politics still mattered.

Rove let Falwell attend, as long as he stayed off-camera. While others wept, Kuo says, Falwell laughed about something with another conservative leader. Spotting Barbara Bush, Falwell remarked on how "frumpy" she looked.

I hope God's passes kinder judgement than Falwell did to others.

Update: Josh Marshall catches MSNBC getting punked out by the running a bogus Falwell piece from the parody site Whitehouse.org.