All’s Well with Falwell’s End

Or
Tinky Winky Can Take a Tinkle Winkle on his Grave
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, without whom Woody Harrelson would still be waiting for a long-overdue Oscar nomination, found out he’s been backing the wrong pony, collapsing in his Liberty University office at the age of 73. Falwell founded his own church in 1956 and quickly began preaching God’s love by telling everyone who didn’t believe exactly what Jerry did that they were a hell-bound abomination. Using his TV pulpit to turn religion into a political tool, Falwell founded the lobbying group the Moral Majority in 1979 and claimed credit for Ronald Reagan’s electoral victory a year later. Among the things the good reverend tried to save America from were racial equality, saying the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was contrary to God’s word and attacking Martin Luther King and his “Civil Wrongs Movement;” the First Amendment, suing Larry Flynt over a parody ad in Hustler that suggested that Falwell lost his virginity to his drunk mother in an outhouse, before losing in a Supreme Court ruling; the anti-Apartheid movement, opposing sanctions and calling Desmond Tutu a phony; and a kids’ TV character with a vocabulary of 26 words, claiming that Tinky Winky, the purple member of the acid trip barbershop quartet The Teletubbies, was gay. Falwell’s anti-gay agenda reached its nadir, or zenith, when he blamed gays, along with liberals and feminists, for the terrorist attacks of September, 11, 2001. While the Bush White House had no problem later using those attacks for political gain, even they had to say, “Hold on there, Pardner.” Falwell’s theism was also anti-Semitic, as he claimed that the Antichrist was a Jewish man who was probably alive in a bit of Christianity lifted from the plot of The Omen III: The Final Conflict.

While everyone benefits on this one, Steve Prokopy scores an extra 20 points, and climbs into the logpile at 22nd.