Hate is not a good legacy

May 19, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

Recently, I was struck by a photograph that ran on the front page of The New York Times. The archival photo from 1957 depicts Elizabeth Eckford, a young African-American woman, walking toward Central High School in Little Rock. She is surrounded by a crowd of people. (See it here.)

Eckford carries herself with quiet dignity — quite an accomplishment under the circumstances. Directly behind her is a young white woman, Hazel Massery. Her face is a twisted mask of rage, frozen in hate.

I thought about that photo again when I read the accounts of the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Specially, I thought about the legacy we leave to this world.

We all have to die some day. Chances are, most of won’t leave behind much but some memories that our friends and loved ones will recall from time to time. Perhaps that legacy will be mixed — people will remember the good and the bad.

A select few people will manage to touch the lives of many others in some way. Falwell was one of those people — but what will he be remembered for? The uber-answer to that question is that he helped usher in the Religious Right and, whether we like it or not, did redefine American politics. But his larger legacy, which I think is pretty negative to begin with, is overshadowed by specific incidents of intolerance and extremism from his disturbing career.

Falwell will be remembered as the guy who outed the purple Teletubby, as the man who accused his fellow Americans of being responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. People will recall that he once compared Sen. Hillary Clinton to Satan and said the Antichrist will be Jewish.

He’ll be remembered for gay bashing, for religious intolerance and for crude personal attacks on his perceived enemies. He’ll be remembered as someone who divided, not united, our people.

And as legacies go, this is a really lousy one. These are crummy things to be remembered for.

The truly sad thing is, it didn’t have to be that way.

Redemption is possible. Hazel Massery, for example, eventually atoned for her sins. In 1996, she apologized to Eckford on national television, saying that the hateful image of herself in the photo had gnawed at her for 40 years. The two later appeared together at a commemorative event at Central High.

Falwell, sadly, never took a step like that. He seemed incapable of ever admitting a mistake or saying, “I’m sorry.” Even his “apology” after his hateful comments on Sept. 13, 2001, was half-hearted. Even more appalling, just weeks later, Falwell’s son Jonathan used the incident as the basis for a fund-raising letter. Jonathan Falwell asserted that his father was being raked over the coals by liberals and pointed out that a few bucks would sure make him feel better. Just when I thought Falwell had gone as low as he could, he actually managed to go lower.

I tell my children that you have one shot at this life — make it a good one. I know it’s not considered polite to say negative things about the recently departed, but Falwell’s passing should not obscure one obvious reality: He was given a chance to make a difference in the world, a rare opportunity most of us never receive. He squandered it. That is the final tragedy of Jerry Falwell’s misspent life.

I have my doubts about the afterlife and the existence of a Supreme Being. But I do know this: If such a being exists, he/she/it created us all and does not want us to hate one another. Thus, those who promulgate hate will not spend eternity in a good place. But I’m not vindictive. Falwell need not endure hot flames licking at his ample backside. Putting him alone in a room to spend eternity contemplating his squandered life is punishment enough.

Falwell’s legacy will be to give many of us a reason to feel a little better about ourselves.

  • Miguel de Unamuno once said that we should live our lives in such a way that the gods, if they exist, will be embarrassed they didn’t make us immortal. Falwell’s life embarrassed those of us who try to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

  • It’s quite likely, scientifically speaking, that the electrical and chemical energy that ran Falwell’s brain simply stopped when he died. Rather than some metaphysical place to atone for his life, perhaps he just winked out of existence, like all the rest of us will, eventually.

    Hopefully his life spent peddling conservative visions of identical,lockstep, white Americans to the faithful, while hardly ever giving creedence to Jesus’ true message of love and forgiveness, will convince others that maybe it’s better to live your life using your heart to guide you, rather than superstition and blind faith.

  • There is no need to apologize for telling the truth about someone whose passing concludes their ability to further divide us, or to rally the ignorant and stupid to be hateful and bigoted. His sons and others may invoke his memory and highly dubious legacy to raise more money and control his following, such as it is, but ultimately this shallow, narrow-minded man with strong odious principles will be remembered for his intolerance and the damage he has done to our political discourse. Neither his ethics or devotion to decent Christian fundamentals, as opposed to Christian fundamentalism, are worthy of note other than to say he respected neither.

    His passing is neither sad nor tragic. In my book it is belated. Another superannuated, antidiluvian dinosaur gone, and in his case hopefully forgotten.

  • There will always be those who seek fame and power by appealing to the worst in others, and there will always be others looking for such leaders to follow. On the larger scale, the question is how does society at large deal with such people, and in the case of Falwell and his followers, I don’t think we did so well.

    Speaking only for myself and those I hung out with at the time, we dismissed Falwell’s early rantings of hate and bigotry masked in self-righteousness. We thought he represented a lunatic fringe that would have no lasting influence. We though the vast majority of people were more or less rational.

    We were wrong. We underestimated the power of a charismatic leader, the power of hatred, and the power of religion — even in such distorted form. We underestimated the determination of the lunatic fringe to be heard, and their evangelical obsessions. We also overestimated a large number of our fellow citizens.

    It is said that the pendulum swings both ways, and had we been older or wiser, we might have understood that the waves of social change in the 60s and 70s were not entirely indicative of the future, but would lead to a backlash. We were smug when we should have been more diligent, and the rise of the theocrats, the neocons, and the authoritarians that we witness today is the result.

    Today, I feel much like those who felt disenfranchised in the 60s and 70s must have felt — that democracy and society are in grave danger. Just like they created a backlash to reverse changes they could not bear, so too must we now rise to thwart that which we cannot bear. We must force the pendulum to swing the other way and in the process, hopefully bring a few more converts to our side.

    And if we are successful, I hope we are more diligent. There will always be Falwell’s and anxious followers waiting for charismatic, if misguided, leaders.

  • For all those Southerners who too the time to privately accuse me of “south-bashing” earlier this week when I called Jerry Falwell a “southern traitor,” I would ask you: do you actually think Falwell could have risen in any other part of the country to the place he held?

    Jerry Falwell was a particularly “southern” phenomenon: representative of a significant part of the mainstream of southern relgion and culture – if that wasn’t true, he’d never have accomplished what he did. So consider the next time someone “bashes” the south why people get so upset – could it be knowledge that the charges are usually accurate?

    Have a good weekend, folks – I’m off to go look at old airplanes.

  • Falwell’s heritage is that his school will keep churning out little right wing debaters and lawyers to further degrade this country.

    Everybody lies about god.

  • Yesterday morning as I was taking my shower, I suddenly got an idea for a commemorative cartoon about the passing of the Rev. Mr. Falwell. In a way it’s a cliche, but Jerry shows up at the pearly gates, and finds that the guy sitting at the desk with the big book isn’t a grizzled old St. Peter, but (wait for it)…a smiling, purse-totin’ Tinky Wink.

  • #6

    Nice bashin TC. The South has been a curse to this country since it’s inception. Good food, good literature, good manners, good riddance. By the way, the music doesnt count. It’s not yours, crackers.

  • Headlines for the braindead —
    http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27431

    “Report: Pedophilia more common among ‘gays’:”
    “Research purports to reveal ‘dark side’ of homosexual culture.”

    “Child molestation and pedophilia occur far more commonly among homosexuals than among heterosexuals on a per capita basis, according to a new study.”

    This is a classic illustration not of ‘news’ but how people allow ‘news’ to control their minds to the point straight talking can become ‘news’. Let’s go back to first definitions. “Homosexuality” by definition is same sex sexual contact. “Heterosexuality” is defined as opposite sex sexual contact. “Pedophilia” is defined as sexual contact between an adult and a child. There’s nothing in controversy over the definitions themselves. The desirability of various behaviors is the subject of endless Judeo-Media angst but the definitions are not. So far so good.

    Pedophilia involving 1) an adult man and 2) a young boy is by logical definition “homosexual” same sex behavior. The number of incidents involving male pedophiles and young boys statistically outweighs pedophilia involving men and young girls. The confusion arose over people’s uncritical acceptance of the Sodomite Lobby’s definition of ‘gays’ as not including homosexual pedophiles and vice versa. This was always pure sophistry. As a result of the public acceptance of the vice versa the vice got worsa!

    “Maguire”

  • Putting him alone in a room to spend eternity contemplating his squandered life is punishment enough.

    In the vanishingly-unlikely event that human consciousness continues in some form after death, I see no reason to think that this smug, self-righteous, arrogant man is any more capable of such introspection than he was in life. An eternity of flames seems excessive, but perhaps a better fate would be a new life in which he would be the target of the kind of bigotry he preached.

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