Stupid Fat-Falwell Quotes, Always Newsworthy

by Jeff S. Jones

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Fat people are worthless in many ways, mainly because they are fat and ugly and therefore lower the value of the human race, but when you combine their girth with their stupidity, then the only other thing to do, if you are a skinny person, is to claim to be half-ape. Jeff Jones gives us insight into one particularly stupid fat person.

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Anyone keeping track of the news this week couldn’t miss the headlines about Rev. Jerry Falwell and his recent comments regarding Hillary Clinton’s possible 2008 presidential bid.

At a prayer breakfast on September 22nd, Falwell remarked to several hundred pastors and religious activists that nothing would encourage evangelical Christians to vote Republican in the next presidential election more than if Hillary Clinton ran. “I hope she's the candidate, because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary Clinton," he said. “If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't.”

“He was calling Hillary Clinton a demonic figure and openly arguing that God is a Republican,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Falwell’s comments come at a time when many are speculating that Clinton, the United States Senator from New York and former First Lady, will be the Democratic Party’s next presidential candidate.

And it certainly looks like she will. The Arizona Republic reports that Hillary Clinton is the most prolific fund-raiser in Congress, raising $44.9 million over the past six years for her campaign to win a second Senate term. In a December 2005 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 41% of Democrats preferred her for the 2008 nomination. And some people want Hillary to run for president so bad that they have set-up their own unofficial campaign site, http://www.votehillary.org/.

Falwell now says that the remarks were “tongue-in-cheek” and Clinton press secretary Philippe Reines said Sunday in response, “Working for someone who believes in the Golden Rule, we're not going to engage in such vitriolic discourse — but it seems that a new low has been reached in demonizing political opponents.”

Being an atheist myself, I am pretty sure that God is not a Republican – heck, I see no proof that God exists. But you’ve got to admire Hillary for getting Falwell so hot and bothered that he would go on record saying that she is more powerful than Lucifer, at least when it comes to getting people interested in political issues.

Jerry Falwell is the founder of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a mega-church in Lynchburg, Virginia, The Moral Majority Coalition, an organization designed to continue the “evangelical revolution” to help conservative politicians get elected, and Liberty University, a Christian university, also in Virginia, which issues students reprimands and fines for attending dances, viewing R-rated movies, drinking, or participating in unauthorized petitions. (A link to Liberty’s Code of Conduct, which includes 30 reprimands and a $500 fine for having an abortion, can be found online here .) But he is most famous for being a master at getting free publicity by saying very stupid things, and for being fat.

Just a few years back, he blamed the September 11th terrorist attacks on feminists, homosexuals, the ACLU, and abortion right supporters, saying, “God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve,” and “The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.”

And after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Texas sodomy case Lawrence v. Texas, where the court upheld an individual’s right to privacy, he had this to say: “This is probably as bad a day as the court has had on social issues since Roe v. Wade.” I couldn’t personally think of a better reason than this comment, made by an influential evangelical conservative, for women to vote for Hillary.

Despite what Jerry Falwell now says, no one really believes that he was “just joking” when he made that Lucifer comment – especially since Falwell has proven in the past that he has no sense of humor, and demonstrated what a big, fat whiny baby he is when people joke about him.

In 1983 Hustler magazine published an advertisement parody of Campari Liquer featuring various celebrities talking about their “first time”. One of the parodies had Falwell saying that his “first time” was during a drunken incestuous encounter with his mother in an outhouse. The actual “first time” referred to in the ad was the first time that each celebrity had drank Campari – although there was an obvious sexual double entendre. The bottom of the ad contained a disclaimer, “ad parody – not to be taken seriously”, and the ad was listed in the magazine’s table of contents as “Fiction; Ad and Personality Parody”. But Falwell still sued Hustler and Larry Flynt, for invasion of privacy, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. A jury found against Falwell on the libel claim, saying that it could reasonably be understood that the ad was a parody, but found in favor of Falwell on the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, awarding him $100,000 in compensatory damages and $50,000 in punitive damages from each petitioner. Hustler and Larry Flynt then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which reversed the decision and found that free speech prohibits public figures from recovering from the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by publishing a caricature.

It all begs the question: why would anyone even bother printing the butt stupid comments of such a man as Falwell? One might argue that his quotes are so outrageous that they are fun to read, for shock value, and an easy topic for discussion at the water cooler. But beneath the initial “Look at me!” tone of his words, there is really a darker agenda and that’s what is scary about Falwell and his followers.

In 1979, Falwell published these words: “I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”

Obviously Falwell longs for the day when America is a theocracy where mythology like “Intelligent Design” is taught as fact to our children, women have no reproductive rights, and Gays and non-Christians are punished as sinners.

And what’s truly not funny is that Falwell represents what some Americans are really thinking – and this is mostly what makes his quotes newsworthy. They give us all an insight into a part of America full of ignorance and misinformation that would love to take us back to the Dark Ages.

Personally, I would certainly vote for Lucifer if he were running against Falwell. Unfortunately, Lucifer probably wouldn’t try to get Americans health care and raise the minimum wage.

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Jeff S. Jones is an American writer who has lived in Tokyo, Japan since 2003. Therefore this qualifies him as the authority on Asian beaver.