So, no, I don’t consider myself on the level of the Right or Bush & Co.
One of the arguments against Bush and his crew’s “interrogation” techniques is that we, the Americans, the Good Guys, should have a better moral standard then those we condemn for acts of torture. Many here condemn the actions of Bush and crew by pointing out that doing wrong is wrong no matter who does is or what their stated excuse for their actions.
Same thing here. Expressing unbridled glee at the death of a person because of their political or religious beliefs VS your own is what I expect from political vermin like Coulter, O’Reilly and Savage. It’s equally distasteful when directed at someone in their camp by the “other side.”
Would you also say that there would be no reason to take pleasure in the passing of this KKK person?
I would not miss the person or shed a tear at their passing. I would also not express glee that the person died. As I said, I leave that kind of thing to the Coulters of the world and those of minds like hers.
I don’t know about Falwell, but his friend Pat Robertson has prayed for Supreme Court Justices to die so that they could be replaced with more conservative ones.
And how many here who condemned Robertson as a bad person for such statements now act and speak much as he did.
But you’re right. I should not be sinking to the level of Falwell, Robertson, and the rest.
Bingo!!
Look, I’m not saying that we’re not going to have thoughts like these. I was at work pulling some overtime when the news broke. I was tired and cranky cause I hate getting up early enough to work dayshift and my first thought on the subject was… less then kind.
My second thought was that I don’t want to be that kind of person and I put that garbage out of my head. I dislike when the Right Wing @$$e$ out there make such public statements and I feel that they’re scumbags when they do. I have no desire to emulate their stupidity.
We’re all going to think things like that from time to time. The worst of our nature will always rear its ugly head. But I would prefer to leave the displays of that kind of thing to the professional and practiced scum balls like Savage and Coulter and not practice it myself.
A few more bløw jøbš would go a long way to solving a lot of the world’s problems – I was just writing something about that on my blog the other day.
Kate said she visualises Falwell arriving in front of the Big Guy’s throne:
“Jerrry – you got a lot of ‘splaining to do!”
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at May 16, 2007 01:09 AM
We’re all going to think things like that from time to time. The worst of our nature will always rear its ugly head. But I would prefer to leave the displays of that kind of thing to the professional and practiced scum balls like Savage and Coulter and not practice it myself.
And I believe I speak for most here when I say that we’re glad that you, having the job you do, feel that way.
I, myself, had a strange thought. What if Jerry Falwell is reincarnated as my kid? At least I could hardly teach him worse than what he spewed in this last life of his.
-Rex Hondo-
PS- As for the original subject of the thread, “Not it!”
Jesus. I was really sleep-deprived yesterday and it affected me WAY more than I thought. I re-read my first post in response to Rob Brown and it reads like some kinda psychotic breakdown.
Yikes.
Look, I stand by what I said originally about Falwell’s death, but maybe I didn’t express my thoughts as well as I could have. To put them more concisely and clearly:
1. No one truly knows the mind of God. No one. Announcing that Falwell will burn in Hëll is as conceited as Falwell’s certainty that gays will do the same. I suspect that we’re all in for a surprise in the afterlife.
2. Publicly expressing joy about the death of one with whom you disagreed is hateful and petty. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the secular left or the religious right: hate is hate, no matter how you dress it up.
3. I abhor Falwell’s views. I believe he was a hate-monger. I nevertheless take no joy in his passing. The two views are not mutually exclusive.
I take no pleasure in the passing of someone whose major crime was having opinions with which I disagreed. Everyone has loved ones, friends, etc., and the knowledge that *someone* out there is grieving his passing precludes me from thinking much beyond, “Oh well.”
PAD
PAD’s approach to this is correct, I think. It is degrading to exult in Falwell’s death. It’s very easy to take the approach Falwell, Robertson and many others did – proclaiming that a particular death is God’s punishment for something (per Falwell, homosexuality, abortion rights, not voting the GOP ticket, etc., per his opponents, being a self-righteous jerk) – but what many of us most disliked about him is completely validated by adopting his rhetoric. If his God exists, Falwell is being rewarded, or otherwise, without our input.
This isn’t very much connected with Jerry Falwell, but PAD’s determination to maintain the high road raises an interesting question. How bad does someone need to be for us to feel comfortable joking about his death – or, looking at it from a different side, how much time must pass before it’s OK to joke about it? In the first case, most of us think its fine to mock Hitler or Ted Bundy – They were just that wicked. In the second case, there are a lot of jokes about Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Ford’s Theater which don’t seem to upset very many people. It’s all pretty complicated, but erring on the side of civility seems like a good idea.
I don’t feel much sorrow for Falwell’s death. To paraphrase John Byrne’s MAN OF STEEL, “Yes, I feel sorry for him. I feel more sorrow for his victims.” Falwell transformed much of American religion into a club, to attack and destroy anything and anyone they disagreed with. Feminists and gays were evil, and the separation of church and state should be replaced with their version of Christianity.
For a great read that includes a lot on Falwell, I highly recommend the book RELIGION GONE BAD by Mel White (who was a member of the religious right before he came out as a homosexual). White not only traces the outrages of fundamentalist evangelicanism, but also its origins and how to fight them by inclusion and demonstration. (White — who is still religious after coming out — sought reconciliation, not separation; he attended Falwell’s church each Sunday, hoping to change minds through example instead of difference.)
“In the second case, there are a lot of jokes about Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Ford’s Theater which don’t seem to upset very many people. It’s all pretty complicated, but erring on the side of civility seems like a good idea.”
A line variously attributed to Carol Burnett, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen is “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Right now, doing jokes regarding 9/ll would be unthinkable. But once upon a time doing jokes about the Titanic or the Hindenburg would likewise have been unthinkable. Now people can wear t-shirts that say, “The ship sank; get over it” with impunity, and WKRP’s Les Nessman, in watching turkeys plummeting to their deaths, can cry out, “Oh, the humanity!” and get huge laughs, even though on the surface equating a terrible human tragedy with turkeys “hitting the ground like bags of wet cement!” simply isn’t funny.
If Osama bin Laden’s head turns up tomorrow, I’m not going to give a dámņ about anything other than, “Good, the bášŧárd’s dead.” But Falwell? I just don’t see the point.
PAD
JamesLynch’s post does not go too far. Declining to mourn someone you dislike is a very different thing from exulting in his death. If one is religious, the prospect that Falwell’s judgment will be just should be satisfactory; If one is not, the fact that he is gone should be enough.
I agree that it is wrong to take pleasure in the death of another human being, but I did feel a twinge of Schaudenfreude when I heard about Falwell. I’m not proud of it, but at least I’m honest about it.
I know it is considered poor taste to speak ill of the dead, but Falwell was a con man who preached hate and used religion to bilk people out of millions of dollars so that he could live the high life. He as a despiccable human being, but a human being nonetheless, so I will try to say something postive about him.
Um.
Once his corpse is buried, he’ll provide nurishment to countless worms, bacteria, and fungi.
Sorry, that’s all I got. When he exploited the deaths of the 9/11 victims to advance his own agenda of hate, I lost the last vestiges of respect I had for him as a carbon-based lifeform. I’m sure someone loved him and misses him, but I can’t pretend that I think he was something he was not, that being a decent human being. If there is a hëll, I’m sure a 10th circle was added in the 20th century for the televangelists.
So, while I offer my condolences to his family and friends, in my gut I still feel the world is a better place without him.
Jeffrey: “In the second case, there are a lot of jokes about Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Ford’s Theater which don’t seem to upset very many people. It’s all pretty complicated, but erring on the side of civility seems like a good idea.”
PAD: A line variously attributed to Carol Burnett, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen is “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”
On the other hand, Johnny Carson often said that even over 100 years later, jokes about Lincoln always bombed on stage, because it’s still “too soon”.
As for the sign about Bush getting a BJ, it’s not really new. I’ve seen similar signs like that on the news and the web for the past 3-4 years.
It probably is too late to hope that enough of the republicans in Congress could be weened off the Kool-Aid in order to make an impeachment and removal of the decider (or his he the conductor now?) possible. Our only recourse now is to wait out the remaining 19 months and let history be the final judge.
One of the arguments against Bush and his crew’s “interrogation” techniques is that we, the Americans, the Good Guys, should have a better moral standard then those we condemn for acts of torture.
So… we’re comparing the reaction to the death of a moral hypocrits to torture?
Isn’t that about on the same level as those who say it’s ridiculous to compare Bush to Hitler?
As Den just said, I’m at least honest in my views of Falwell. I’m not claiming any sort of moral righteousness that should place me above such thoughts.
But that’s the sort of righteousness that Bush, Falwell and others espouse when they’re just full of it.
I don’t go around every day saying “Yep, he’s going to hëll, she’s going to hëll, that group of people are going to hëll just because the Bible dropped a line here and there saying something they did is bad”. Which is how Falwell lived his life by trying to force his brand of religion down our throats.
Just like I think Bush & Cheney have also now earned themselves a spot somewhere near where Falwell will spend eternity, based on their actions during this administration.
All that abuse of power and religion… the irony that it’s deserving of a trip to Hëll is telling.
Yolanda Denise King, eldest child of Martin Luther King Jr., also passed away late last night at the age of 51.
Den – Johnny Carson would have known what jokes worked, but it’s obvious that the sharpness of any distaste for Lincoln jokes has declined after 142 years. I’m a little surprised that Hitler jokes are sometimes considered not-too-distasteful. Perhaps the feeling of connection to recent history has declined in recent times. This is completely changing the subject, I suppose, but I think two areas of thought about Hitler are disturbing: 1. People see the events of WWII as long ago and unconnected to our world: I don’t agree, and I think being unconcerned with such an important event is irresponsible. 2. (This one is very hard to express clearly) The Holocaust is seen as a single, unrepeatable anomaly – an evil beyond humanity, done with, and never to be repeated. It was done by real people, could happen again, and shouldn’t be marginalized. Hitler was not something outside of Homo Sapiens, but rather an expression of the worst in the species. If we see him as an unrepeatable freak of nature and history we are unprepared for future atrocities – also by monstrously evil, but still human, people.
One of the cruelest ideas that “Christians” like Falwell supported was that whoever disagreed with their narrow-minded views would be eternally punished in Hëll. I can’t bring myself to wish that much torment to anyone.
I don’t feel happy nor sad that he died. What makes me sad is that Falwell’s poisonous ideas are still very much alive, and new defenders of bigotry and hatred will raise to take his place.
“Actually Manny, I think you mean the latter. The former here would be “agree” and your subsequent remarks suggest you don’t have a high opinion of the man.”
D’OH!!!! Ya got me!!!
Just gotta clarify, I won’t celebrate or exult in the death of the flawed individual. All manner of bad karma there. For better or worse, he believed the ideological sewage that he spouted.
I will, however, take a HUGE freakin’ degree of joy that at least one prominent hate monger is no longer polluting the airwaves. I will also find humour in his probable shock in where he ends up.
To paraphrase Dan St. Cloud in his “Afterlife Allstar Game”, “Also here in Hëll, Jerry Falwell, and boy does he look surprised!”
Falwell spent most of his time spouting fear and hate. He used political influence in attempt to shape policy to suit his fear and hate.
“Actually Manny, I think you mean the latter. The former here would be “agree” and your subsequent remarks suggest you don’t have a high opinion of the man.”
D’OH!!!! Ya got me!!!
Just gotta clarify, I won’t celebrate or exult in the death of the flawed individual. All manner of bad karma there. For better or worse, he believed the ideological sewage that he spouted.
I will, however, take a HUGE freakin’ degree of joy that at least one prominent hate monger is no longer polluting the airwaves. I will also find humour in his probable shock in where he ends up.
To paraphrase Dan St. Cloud in his “Afterlife Allstar Game”, “Also here in Hëll, Jerry Falwell, and boy does he look surprised!”
Falwell spent most of his time spouting fear and hate. He used political influence in attempt to shape policy to suit his fear and hate.
Sorry ’bout the double post. Cheap PC in the driver’s room in Vancouver. Microsoft Culpa.
I take no pleasure in the passing of someone whose major crime was having opinions with which I disagreed.
Class act.
without going into my opinions of any president, i tend to agree with an opinion expressed in an issue of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman in which Richard Nixon said (and this is an approximate quote without my reference in front of me)
“While you’re in office you’ll be the worst president in history until you’re out of office, then it’s some other áššhølë’s turn.”
in other words, we’ll hate the next guy as much as we hate this guy.
Unless the next guy is as incompetant, arrogant, crony-loving, and autocratic as this chump, I seriously doubt he will be as hated as much as Bush.
“how much time must pass before it’s OK to joke about it?”
Yesterday I saw a Washington Mutual commercial where one of the old fashioned bankers said they knew who was on the grassy knoll in Dallas. I know a lot of people that would think that was exceedingly poor taste. It’s not a question of the passage of time.
“It’s not a question of the passage of time.”
Sure it is. Nothing in your example shows that it isn’t.
In the last few years I’ve seen several JFK assassination jokes that I thought were funny. Your friends may not like them, but they don’t speak for everyone. At one time they *did* speak for everyone as nobody would even have attempted those jokes five or even ten years after the assassination.
Is everyone is going to like jokes about the death of JFK? No, but a lot more like those jokes now than did twenty years ago. Twenty years from now, even more people will be OK with the jokes.
Jason, sorry, I mistyped. I meant to put in, “It’s not JUST a question of the passage of time.”
Sorry.
Unless the next guy is as incompetant, arrogant, crony-loving, and autocratic as this chump, I seriously doubt he will be as hated as much as Bush.
Yeah. Nowadays most just politicians cause boredom and a sort of low-level distaste. The guy needs to be something special to provocke the sort of visceral hatred directed at Bush.
I don’t remember any US President being so hated since Nixon. Clinton and Reagan were intensely disliked by people in the opposite side of the political spectrum as they were, but not to the level Bush is.
I actually have this on a button…
Sure it is. Nothing in your example shows that it isn’t.
“We could go back to Dallas, 1963, stand on the grassy knoll and shout ‘Duck!'” – Kryten, “Timeslides”, which aired in December 1989, a ‘mere’ 25 years after JFK’s assassination.
Probably not the first ‘grassy knoll’ joke, but one of the best, imo.
And then Red Dwarf would later base a whole episode around JFK’s assassination and changing history.
But is it merely the passage of time? Yes and no.
Yes because time heals all wounds, as it were. But also no because it also depends on the butt of the joke.
Take South Park and the whole Steve Erwin bit and how much flak they took. Same for Bill Maher and that costume party he went to.
Replace Erwin with Hussein right after Hussein’s hanging and I bet nobody bats an eye, at least in most of the world.
Jesus. I was really sleep-deprived yesterday and it affected me WAY more than I thought. I re-read my first post in response to Rob Brown and it reads like some kinda psychotic breakdown.
There was a difference? I didn’t notice one. Anybody else? Guys?
So… we’re comparing the reaction to the death of a moral hypocrites to torture? Isn’t that about on the same level as those who say it’s ridiculous to compare Bush to Hitler?
Yes and no. I’m not comparing the acts themselves as much as the mindset behind them.
Those here who have condemned Bush for his torture policies have done so by pointing out that his actions portray America to the world as no better then the terrorist by acting in a manner that America condemns others for. If America tortures prisoners, then America is acting in a matter no better then its opponents in this war. The moral high ground is lost and the ability to condemn or speak on the subject is weakened considerably.
The same thing holds true here. The same people who condemn Bush over his “interrogation” policies are the same people who condemn Coulter, Savage, Robertson, etc. for praying for another’s death, suggesting that assignation would be a good idea or actively expressing glee that someone “got what they deserved” by dieing when all the other person was truly guilty of was thinking, believing or speaking in a manner that was politically or religiously at odds with what they felt was right.
If you engage in the exact same thing, how are you any different or better then Coulter or Robertson? Falwell was, in my eyes, deeply flawed. He was not however a murderer, torturer or fascist dictator. He simply spoke what he believed. I may have expressed outrage at it from time to time, but he had a right as an American to think and speak as he wished. For that matter, so do you, Coulter, Savage and Robertson. You all have the absolute right to express glee and joy at the death of and idea of afterlife suffering of someone who you politically disagreed with on the day or week of their passing. Others have the right to point out that “birds of a feather…
I’m not claiming any sort of moral righteousness that should place me above such thoughts.
Nor am I. I admitted that my first thoughts at the news were less the decent. The difference between myself and a Coulter or Savage though is that I actually look at what I’m thinking and determine whether or not I want to be that scummy. Actually, I’m sure they do as well. They just come up with a different answer.
I’m not going to condemn someone for their first thoughts on a subject. It’s just where they chose to go with those first thoughts that shows their character. It’s a bit like stealing. I doubt that there’s a person here who hasn’t thought at least once in their life, if only for just a fleeting second, that they could get away with slipping off with something they really wanted but couldn’t afford or maybe driving off at the pump. What separates the decent folks from the not so decent folks is whether they act on that thought or whether they chose to kick it back down.
I’m not even going to just condemn people for just their first words on a subject. We’ve all said something that we thought the wiser of a few minutes or hours later. What separates some people from others is whether or not they decide that what they said wasn’t appropriate or not and whether or not they learn from their past statements and retractions.
Yesterday I saw a Washington Mutual commercial where one of the old fashioned bankers said they knew who was on the grassy knoll in Dallas.
Duh, everybody knows that by know. It was Lister, Rimmer, The Cat, Kryten and JFK from an alternate future.
I think one thing with jokes about death are that they’re actually kind of generic. Some of the jokes in film, TV and standup about historical figures and their deaths are almost in the vein of insert-name-here types of jokes. Another thing is that most of the jokes are more about death and the shock of death rather then about whether or not the historical figure deserved it or whether or not the were suffering in the afterlife. Then of course you get to the subject of violent bášŧárdš like Hitler. Izzard killed with a line about Hitler’s Honeymoon death. I doubt many would argue against joy in Hitler’s death at the time of his death or now because of the nature of his crimes and because of the war he was waging. I also doubt that many would argue that Hitler is spending his afterlife in Hëll. However, much as with Bush, Falwell was no Hitler.
Ðámņ you Craig J. Ries, you beat me to the Red Dwarf example. A pox on you and DVD collection!!!
For the record, I chose my words very carefully in my “in for a big surprise” post. I specifically wanted to avoid sounding like I was consigning him to the pit, which is a decision I don’t get to make.
I was thinking more of Falwell showing up in Heaven and being greeted by, say, Liberace and Susan Sontag, with Albert Einstein and Mohandas Gandhi having a conversation nearby. Y’know, being immediately confronted by the presence of people he was sure would be excluded because of what they believed or how they behaved.
Someone upstairs in this thread made a comment about Falwell’s thinking that voting anything other than GOP is against God’s will, (I think it was Jeffrey Frawley) and I have to wonder about something. If voting for the GOP is with God’s will, then, I have to ask, what the heck do people in other countries do?
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at May 16, 2007 01:21 PM
There was a difference? I didn’t notice one. Anybody else? Guys?
You suck. You really do.
Paul1963,
Your comments weren’t really a major thing on my radar as much as those that expressed glee. Moreover, my initial comments weren’t directed solely at those comments here. I was working overtime as security for a function at the Library of Virginia when the news broke. There were lots of people from lots of different backgrounds around me for quite a few hours. On the drive home, I channel surfed the XM and listened to bits a pieces here and there as well. The comments I was hearing all day were disgusting.
The comments from strangers, passers-by and people calling in to chat shows were one thing. I have no idea how some of them have expressed their views on other topics and events. The ones I found particularly disgusting were from those who’s comments on other topics, especially those directed at imbeciles like Coulter, I was familiar with.
You either stand for a principle or you don’t. You either believe something is wrong or you don’t. You cannot claim that something is wrong when done by someone who is your political, ideological or religious opposite and then declare that it’s fine and dandy to do yourself while excusing it as just being honest. The sad thing about the quality of character in a Coulter, Savage, Robertson, Beck, Falwell, etc. is that they likely believe some of what they’re saying as well. I’m sure that they really are vile enough and low enough to enjoy the death of someone they don’t like and to express glee at the passing of someone who dared to stand on the other side of the political fence as them.
If you condemn them or question their humanity for such actions and statements, what does that say about those who now do the same thing? Are Coulter and Savage better people then some of their critics because they’re merely human pond scum while their critics are both human pond scum and first class hypocrites? I’d like to think not, but the words being uttered and written by many in the last twenty-four hours tend to confirm the worst of their critics.
“I’m a little surprised that Hitler jokes are sometimes considered not-too-distasteful. Perhaps the feeling of connection to recent history has declined in recent times.”
A lot of people forget that when the film “The Producers” originally debuted, Mel Brooks took a TON of heat. WW II was only two decades prior, and having a funny Nazi (the playwright) and singing and dancing Hitlers was considered really pushing the envelope. Watching the more recent musical and film thereof, one of the reasons it’s not quite as effective is that the passage of time has removed the sting of the spectacularly bad taste involved in making a Hitler musical.
Legend has it that when “The Producers” premiered, people really DID walk out of screening during “Springtime for Hitler” because they just couldn’t take it. Brooks was accused of diminishing the evil of Nazism by turning them into figures of fun; his response was that he in fact hated Nazis so much that making fun of them was his way of dealing with that hatred.
PAD
Mel Brooks also took a lot of heat for Blazing Saddles.
Sadly, despite the fact that it skewers racists mercilessly, that movie wouldn’t even get made in today’s climate.
Brooks was accused of diminishing the evil of Nazism by turning them into figures of fun; his response was that he in fact hated Nazis so much that making fun of them was his way of dealing with that hatred.
He’s also made a good point since then, which is that the way to combat demagougery is not with more demagougery, since the dictators (or whatever) are better at it than you are; instead, you fight them by making them look ridiculous, so it’s harder for people to take them seriously. (Especially because those of that stripe are notorious for not having senses of humor about themselves–however angry people got at the time, Hitler would have been even angrier.)
Brooks said at the time of the musical that he only got one complaint about the Nazi material, and that was from someone who seemed to have misunderstood it.
He’s also made a good point since then, which is that the way to combat demagoguery is not with more demagoguery, since the dictators (or whatever) are better at it than you are; instead, you fight them by making them look ridiculous, so it’s harder for people to take them seriously.
People seemed to have understood this just fine when Hitler was actually alive and very much a threat. Look at what the 3 Stooges and Bugs Bunny did to the bášŧárd.
I wonder if there were any complaints about Hogan’s Heroes? The nazis were not only stupid but, in a few cases, kind of lovable (though I guess Sgt Schultz was never portrayed as a nazi so much as just a regular soldier and even Col Klink had moments where I thought he revealed a distaste for the German regime…or at least, that’s what I remember from watching it as a kid.
While I don’t always appreciate Mel Brooks’s sense of humor, his approach in “The Producers” was extremely bright. Making the atrocious ridiculous is one thing; Making it sympathetic is entirely different. It is widely reported that Werner Klemperer (like his father, Otto, a Jewish refugee from Germany in 1933) agreed to play Colonel Klink in “Hogan’s Heroes” only after being assured that Klink would never succeed or even appear competent. John Banner, who played Sergeant Schultz, was an Austrian Jew who had been interned in one of the earliest concentration camps, and he might well have had similar demands. I still think the show was in poor taste and rarely funny, but it didn’t lend any dignity to the Nazis.
I wonder if there were any complaints about Hogan’s Heroes?
I’d say that there likely were. My great aunt never watched that program and reviled the concept of it. She couldn’t figure out what could be slightly funny in anything set in the German POW camps of WWII.
God help you if you mentioned liking the show around her. After ten minutes of lecture, you almost wished you had never heard of the show.
I’ve never understood the indignant have-some-respect-for-the-dead admonishment. As corpses (as in life) people should get the level of respect they earn and have shown to others.
So as far as Falwell is concerned, I am glad he’s gone. And just hope whoever follows him isn’t worse.
PAD: Everyone has loved ones, friends, etc., and the knowledge that *someone* out there is grieving his passing precludes me from thinking much beyond, “Oh well.”
PAD: If Osama bin Laden’s head turns up tomorrow, I’m not going to give a dámņ about anything other than, “Good, the bášŧárd’s dead.”
There are lots of people who would grieve Bin Laden’s passing. So why shouldn’t you be precluded from thinkin much beyone “Oh, well” for him?
I don’t think how I feel about someone dying should be based on how someone else feels about them. Sympathy for those who grieve, hmm, perhaps. But for the departed, if they were someone I disliked as much as Falwell? Glad to see ’em gone. Wish it had been sooner.
Reap what you sow, Jerry.
I’ve never understood the indignant have-some-respect-for-the-dead admonishment.
It’s not a matter of showing respect for the dead. It’s a matter of having respect for one’s self.
I will not step forward and praise the man. I will not discuss his good points only in the week of his passing. I will not claim that he was a good man for his cause and an honest defender of his beliefs. I will not suddenly cease discussing what I see as his failings or the things I found reprehensible about him in the foreseeable future. And I will not for one moment mourn his passing.
However, there is a difference between that and publicly stating great joy and enjoyment in the man’s death. Both may be seen as honest, but the one is far more crass then the other ever will be. And there’s the nut of the matter. How low do you want to go? Do you want to be a Coulter, Savage or O’Reilly or do you want to be better then those that you condemn.
That’s something I always find to be an ironic failing of many fans of heroic fiction. We get together on BBs. blogs, conventions and in other social gatherings and talk about the higher, nobler spirit of mankind and discuss what we see as the ideals to live by. Most boards that are frequented heavily by comic, sci-fi and fantasy fans have a high ratio of posts denouncing some of the shriller and nastier voices on the Right over larger issues (Iraq) and smaller issues (taking glee in someone’s death or the prospect of their death) everyday. So, do many of those fans who speak so highly of ideals, personal integrity and nobler aspirations while condemning the failings of others take the opportunities to prove that they actually are better then those they condemn? No, many of them instead embrace the very nature they condemn in others. Just as many on the left are doing now with Falwell’s death.
I’m not going to claim to be anything close to perfect or a saint, but I do try to not be that which I condemn. If I catch myself doing or saying something for which I have condemned another for, then I tend to reevaluate whether there was validity in that persons position or whether I need to knock off being a hypocrite or scumbag myself. In this case, I looked at my first thoughts on Falwell’s death, looked at my thoughts and feelings about the comments of the most vile on the right and chose the path that was better then theirs. I will not take joy in the death of a man who’s only failing, to my POV, was that he was politically and ideologically opposed to me. He wasn’t a Hitler, Pol Pot, Bin Laden or Third World Warlord. He didn’t march on cities, towns and villages and commit genocide. He didn’t round up people who he deemed inferior and march them into gas chambers. He never once, to my knowledge, masterminded the death of 3000 people from a single terrorist act. He merely spoke views that were in opposition to my own.
For that I will not express joy or glee in his passing or his possible fate in the afterlife. If you wish to count Ann Coulter, Savage and Bill O’Reilly as your spiritual contemporaries and role models, that’s fine by me. Just don’t act surprised if people call you on your use of Coulterisms when you act publicly as she would or point out the total hypocrisy in your statements against others you don’t like acting as you do.
Reap what you sow, Sean.
Bill Mulligan asked: “I wonder if there were any complaints about Hogan’s Heroes?”
When I was in college, I remember someone painted both Hogan’s Heroes and M*A*S*H with the same “make fun of war” brush, and said they were, therefore, beneath contempt. I countered (and I believe others did, too) that while he may have had a point regarding the former, he was off base concerning the latter. M*A*S*H mocked many things about the military, such as officious officers or ridiculous regulations- things real soldiers have probably been doing ever since armies existed- but it never made the Korean war (or war in general) a punchline.
As to Hogan’s Heroes, Werner Klemperer, who escaped from Nazi Germany (or one of its satellite nations, I forget the exact details) was adamant that Col. Klink never win. I believe he once said that if Klink ever came out looking good (at least in comparison to Col. Hogan and the other POWS; he couldn’t help but look good compared to the SS characters), he’d have left the show. Perhaps playing an incompetent German officer (and probable Nazi party member) was his way of “getting back” at the Nazis.
As to Falwell’s death, part of me hopes that if there’s an afterlife, it’ll be one of those Twilight Zone type “you get what you deserve” environments, where his harmful actions and attitudes come back to bite him on the ášš. On the other hand, another part of me hopes that if there is an afterlife, it’s the kind where his negative traits have been expunged, and he’s no longer burdened by bigotry, prejudice and hate.
As to the original subject of the thread, Clinton’s impeachment was a sideshow of ridiculous and costly partisan posturing. Having an affair (and lying about it) was wrong, but it ain’t anywhere near high crimes and misdemeanors. What Bush and Cheney have done is far worse. Both deserve to be impeached.
And convicted.
Rick
I wonder if there were any complaints about Hogan’s Heroes?
When I was in high school, I remember my mom saying that one of my parents’ friends detested the very premise of the show. At the time, I thought that was rather an absurd, extremist reaction.
That is, until I met the man. It turned out that he was a WWII vet. He didn’t see action in Europe though; he was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. After talking with him a while on the street purely by chance (I was home from college and wearing my fraternity letters. He was out raking his yard and saw me. It turned out we belonged to the same frat), I completely understood why he wouldn’t find a wartime prison camp a place for comedy.
There’s a reason why Fred Phelps is universally considered such a sorry excuse for a human being. It’s because he pickets the funerals of people who have died, exploiting the suffering of those who loved them for cheap political points and to make himself feel important. He’s a troll with ambition.
If, by some happenstance, he one day actually pickets the funeral of someone who was a rotten person in life, who will be missed only by his family…it won’t Make. Any. Difference.
Look, as I’ve said, I’m not spotless clean on this, though I would hope that my standard on whose death elicits glee in me does not include those who merely disagree with me and sincerely want to change the world through legal means. I understand how those who are acting this way feel. But even the worst regular poster on this board is better than that.
That is funny joke.
Though, to be completely fair, it’s not only Christians, but all Abrahamic religions that consider themselves the only and ones that will be saved.
If by saved you are referring to some kind of afterlife, my understanding is that Judaism establishes no belief in an afterlife. On an episode of Northern Exposure, a priest asked Joel how the Jews tolerate in life the idea of absolute void after death, and he said he avoided thinking about it.
To play devil’s advocate (and the identity of the “devil” I’m defending here makes that a bit ironic), I don’t think all Christians are agreed on what exactly happens to those who don’t get into heaven. Whether it’s hëll by default, or whether it’s something like limbo or purgatory, or whether it’s something entirely different that isn’t actually as excruciating as eternal torment but rather just being separated from God. So if you hear somebody saying they think only people like them will get into heaven, they may not necessarily be saying that people unlike them will all go to hëll.
Dante was Catholic, which follows a strict adherence to canon, and at least for his time rewards and punishment were not so much issued in the afterlife as the dead continued to behave as they did in life. All of the tortures in the Inferno? Those were meant to represent what we who are guilty do to ourselves while we are alive. There’s nothing stopping the dámņëd from going purgatory to transform their behavior if they choose. There are simply people who are relentless in their behavior.
Btw, who’s to say that just because we’re smarter than amoebas, it means we’re morally superior? I mean, have you ever known an amoeba to have sociopathic tendencies or to wish ill on something else? They live pretty simple existences, don’t they? So who’s to say that God has a better sense of right and wrong than some human somewhere? Not necessarily me…but somebody. Who’s to say that God’s sense of right and wrong is perfect, that he’s never made a mistake when passing down sentence?
That was Job’s challenge to God, was it not? And God never said Job was wrong — He said Job was as right as any of the men among him but still invoked His privilege as God to do as He pleased. And Job bowed to God, as God bet Satan he would. Job’s grace in bowing to the God that arbitrarily allowed him to be punished (and in contrast, as Jung pointed out, God’s lack of grace) is more pronounced when you remember the pre-Christian God offered no afterlife.
I was thinking more of Falwell showing up in Heaven and being greeted by, say, Liberace and Susan Sontag, with Albert Einstein and Mohandas Gandhi having a conversation nearby. Y’know, being immediately confronted by the presence of people he was sure would be excluded because of what they believed or how they behaved.
As far as Falwell wouldn’t tolerate heaven as you present it, he might choose to serve God hëll — as the Muslim portrayal of Satan seems to do. In the Muslim version of the fall, Satan doesn’t refuse God’s command to bow to man because it’s beneath him, but because Satan is God’s biggest fan.
Here’s my final thought on Falwell: I think he was a despicable person. I’m sorry, but I can’t suddenly change my opinion or pretend it doesn’t exist just because he’s dead. It’s not that I want to go and dance on his grave, but I just can’t force myself to feel bad about his demise either.
As for Hogan’s Heroes, I never thought the movie was in poor taste, precisely because it always made the Nazis look foolish and inept. As Steven Spielberg once said, you can never go wrong with Nazis as villains.
Posted by: Bill Myers at May 15, 2007 11:15 PM
Rob, as soon as I hit the submit button on my last post I regretted it.
I don’t think you’re stupid and I’m sorry for ragging on you like that.
Thanks for apologizing.
For the record, no, I wasn’t high, I was just taking you literally. You had said:
“Nevertheless, I believe it is unwise to second-guess God’s will when it comes to who will or will not be saved (assuming the Heaven/Hëll dichotomy is indeed the model upon which the afterlife is based). If there is a God — and I am confident that there is — He is to us as we are to amoebas. Claiming to know the mind of God is, at best, a hubristic conceit.”
The first sentence says it is unwise to second-guess God’s will. I took this entire paragraph to mean that it was not only impossible to know the mind of God, but also that we shouldn’t question God’s decisions, since that is what “second-guessing” means. And that’s why I wrote what I wrote, not because I’d decided to partake of any controlled substance.
Posted by: Craig J. Ries at May 16, 2007 09:37 AM
One of the arguments against Bush and his crew’s “interrogation” techniques is that we, the Americans, the Good Guys, should have a better moral standard then those we condemn for acts of torture.
So… we’re comparing the reaction to the death of a moral hypocrits to torture?
I agree with Jerry’s explanation.
I also feel like mentioning one other thing…
There have been times I haven’t been tolerant, or when I’ve wanted revenge, or when I’ve been judgmental. I haven’t always been that great a person, I acknowledge that. In fact, there have been times where I’ve been a total douchebag. I acknowledge that with no small amount of shame and disgust with myself when I remember what I did. Am I, therefore, cut from the same cloth as Falwell?
Perhaps there are some similarities. Perhaps too many for me to claim the moral high ground, I don’t know. There is, however, one major difference between myself and Falwell: even though both of us have acted like jerks in the past, only one of us has ever claimed to be a devout Christian who was committed to always doing exactly what Jesus would have wanted of him.
If Falwell insisted on calling himself a Christian, he should have tried his dámņdëšŧ to act like Jesus. He should have asked himself every single day “What would Jesus do?” From all indications, he didn’t. Jesus said to forgive your enemies, to turn the other cheek, or to at least try. Instead of trying to forgive the perpetrators of 9/11, instead of turning the other cheek, Falwell called for blood (which is also a violation of “Thou shalt not kill” which, although Jesus didn’t bring that particular commandment to Earth, I’m quite sure it got his full endorsement). Not only did Falwell want revenge, he said so on national television. Not only did he recommend killing them, even though the Bible makes it pretty clear that killing is verboten, but he said it should be done “in the name of the Lord.” As far as I know, he never went in front of a camera and said “I really regret saying that. Revenge and killing is not what the Bible teaches us, it is not what God wants, and I am truly sorry for my outburst.” No, he stood by his statement. As far as I know.
I’m not saying that it was wrong to want revenge after 9/11. It’s completely understandable. But somebody calling himself a Christian should have at least made an honest attempt to fight his desire for vengeance. To all appearances, Falwell made no such attempt.
Jesus also taught people not to be judgmental or intolerant. Hëll, Jesus hung around with lepers and prostitutes and accepted just about anybody who approached him. If people didn’t approach him, Jesus certainly didn’t give fiery speeches about how certain people were abominations and would deservedly suffer in hëll for eternity. He told people “judge not, lest ye be judged.” And what did the Reverend Falwell do? He judged. He judged all kinds of people. You only need to look at the quote in my last post to see him judging his ášš off.
So yes, both Falwell and myself at one time or another may have wished ill on other human beings. Yes, both Falwell and myself might have been intolerant at one time or another. Yes, both Falwell and myself may have even intentionally caused anguish to somebody who did not deserve it. Yes, both Falwell and myself may have judged others when we shouldn’t have.
Falwell, however, was supposed to be a Christian, and Christian teachings forbid acting the way he did. So even though both Falwell and myself have been jerks in the past (and I truly hope that after it’s all tallied up, it’ll turn out that I’ve been less of a jerk overall than him), Falwell’s a much, much, much bigger hypocrite than I could ever be. Anybody who claims to be a Christian and doesn’t even TRY to adhere to Christian teachings is a hypocrite, I firmly believe that. I also feel that way about all the Christians who are pro-death penalty, btw. They’re in favor of criminals being killed and yet they claim to hold the Bible sacred, despite the Bible saying it is unacceptable to kill? Pick one or the other, people. You can’t have both.
RE: How soon is too soon to tell a joke about something bad?
Well, I’d say that there isn’t any real formula that covers all jokes in all circumstances. It depends on the audience, the timing, and how funny the joke is to begin with.
Harkening back to a previous thread about “appropriate” work conversation, I know for a fact that, working in a health care environment, there are conversations and jokes on a regular basis that would never fly in, say, an office environment. For many people, humor is a way of coping with practically having the Grim Reaper as a coworker. I can only imagine what the conversations are like on the job for Jerry Chandler.
• 
So, no, I don’t consider myself on the level of the Right or Bush & Co.
One of the arguments against Bush and his crew’s “interrogation” techniques is that we, the Americans, the Good Guys, should have a better moral standard then those we condemn for acts of torture. Many here condemn the actions of Bush and crew by pointing out that doing wrong is wrong no matter who does is or what their stated excuse for their actions.
Same thing here. Expressing unbridled glee at the death of a person because of their political or religious beliefs VS your own is what I expect from political vermin like Coulter, O’Reilly and Savage. It’s equally distasteful when directed at someone in their camp by the “other side.”
Would you also say that there would be no reason to take pleasure in the passing of this KKK person?
I would not miss the person or shed a tear at their passing. I would also not express glee that the person died. As I said, I leave that kind of thing to the Coulters of the world and those of minds like hers.
I don’t know about Falwell, but his friend Pat Robertson has prayed for Supreme Court Justices to die so that they could be replaced with more conservative ones.
And how many here who condemned Robertson as a bad person for such statements now act and speak much as he did.
But you’re right. I should not be sinking to the level of Falwell, Robertson, and the rest.
Bingo!!
Look, I’m not saying that we’re not going to have thoughts like these. I was at work pulling some overtime when the news broke. I was tired and cranky cause I hate getting up early enough to work dayshift and my first thought on the subject was… less then kind.
My second thought was that I don’t want to be that kind of person and I put that garbage out of my head. I dislike when the Right Wing @$$e$ out there make such public statements and I feel that they’re scumbags when they do. I have no desire to emulate their stupidity.
We’re all going to think things like that from time to time. The worst of our nature will always rear its ugly head. But I would prefer to leave the displays of that kind of thing to the professional and practiced scum balls like Savage and Coulter and not practice it myself.
A few more bløw jøbš would go a long way to solving a lot of the world’s problems – I was just writing something about that on my blog the other day.
Kate said she visualises Falwell arriving in front of the Big Guy’s throne:
“Jerrry – you got a lot of ‘splaining to do!”
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at May 16, 2007 01:09 AM
We’re all going to think things like that from time to time. The worst of our nature will always rear its ugly head. But I would prefer to leave the displays of that kind of thing to the professional and practiced scum balls like Savage and Coulter and not practice it myself.
And I believe I speak for most here when I say that we’re glad that you, having the job you do, feel that way.
I, myself, had a strange thought. What if Jerry Falwell is reincarnated as my kid? At least I could hardly teach him worse than what he spewed in this last life of his.
-Rex Hondo-
PS- As for the original subject of the thread, “Not it!”
Jesus. I was really sleep-deprived yesterday and it affected me WAY more than I thought. I re-read my first post in response to Rob Brown and it reads like some kinda psychotic breakdown.
Yikes.
Look, I stand by what I said originally about Falwell’s death, but maybe I didn’t express my thoughts as well as I could have. To put them more concisely and clearly:
1. No one truly knows the mind of God. No one. Announcing that Falwell will burn in Hëll is as conceited as Falwell’s certainty that gays will do the same. I suspect that we’re all in for a surprise in the afterlife.
2. Publicly expressing joy about the death of one with whom you disagreed is hateful and petty. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the secular left or the religious right: hate is hate, no matter how you dress it up.
3. I abhor Falwell’s views. I believe he was a hate-monger. I nevertheless take no joy in his passing. The two views are not mutually exclusive.
I take no pleasure in the passing of someone whose major crime was having opinions with which I disagreed. Everyone has loved ones, friends, etc., and the knowledge that *someone* out there is grieving his passing precludes me from thinking much beyond, “Oh well.”
PAD
PAD’s approach to this is correct, I think. It is degrading to exult in Falwell’s death. It’s very easy to take the approach Falwell, Robertson and many others did – proclaiming that a particular death is God’s punishment for something (per Falwell, homosexuality, abortion rights, not voting the GOP ticket, etc., per his opponents, being a self-righteous jerk) – but what many of us most disliked about him is completely validated by adopting his rhetoric. If his God exists, Falwell is being rewarded, or otherwise, without our input.
This isn’t very much connected with Jerry Falwell, but PAD’s determination to maintain the high road raises an interesting question. How bad does someone need to be for us to feel comfortable joking about his death – or, looking at it from a different side, how much time must pass before it’s OK to joke about it? In the first case, most of us think its fine to mock Hitler or Ted Bundy – They were just that wicked. In the second case, there are a lot of jokes about Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Ford’s Theater which don’t seem to upset very many people. It’s all pretty complicated, but erring on the side of civility seems like a good idea.
I don’t feel much sorrow for Falwell’s death. To paraphrase John Byrne’s MAN OF STEEL, “Yes, I feel sorry for him. I feel more sorrow for his victims.” Falwell transformed much of American religion into a club, to attack and destroy anything and anyone they disagreed with. Feminists and gays were evil, and the separation of church and state should be replaced with their version of Christianity.
For a great read that includes a lot on Falwell, I highly recommend the book RELIGION GONE BAD by Mel White (who was a member of the religious right before he came out as a homosexual). White not only traces the outrages of fundamentalist evangelicanism, but also its origins and how to fight them by inclusion and demonstration. (White — who is still religious after coming out — sought reconciliation, not separation; he attended Falwell’s church each Sunday, hoping to change minds through example instead of difference.)
“In the second case, there are a lot of jokes about Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Ford’s Theater which don’t seem to upset very many people. It’s all pretty complicated, but erring on the side of civility seems like a good idea.”
A line variously attributed to Carol Burnett, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen is “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Right now, doing jokes regarding 9/ll would be unthinkable. But once upon a time doing jokes about the Titanic or the Hindenburg would likewise have been unthinkable. Now people can wear t-shirts that say, “The ship sank; get over it” with impunity, and WKRP’s Les Nessman, in watching turkeys plummeting to their deaths, can cry out, “Oh, the humanity!” and get huge laughs, even though on the surface equating a terrible human tragedy with turkeys “hitting the ground like bags of wet cement!” simply isn’t funny.
If Osama bin Laden’s head turns up tomorrow, I’m not going to give a dámņ about anything other than, “Good, the bášŧárd’s dead.” But Falwell? I just don’t see the point.
PAD
JamesLynch’s post does not go too far. Declining to mourn someone you dislike is a very different thing from exulting in his death. If one is religious, the prospect that Falwell’s judgment will be just should be satisfactory; If one is not, the fact that he is gone should be enough.
I agree that it is wrong to take pleasure in the death of another human being, but I did feel a twinge of Schaudenfreude when I heard about Falwell. I’m not proud of it, but at least I’m honest about it.
I know it is considered poor taste to speak ill of the dead, but Falwell was a con man who preached hate and used religion to bilk people out of millions of dollars so that he could live the high life. He as a despiccable human being, but a human being nonetheless, so I will try to say something postive about him.
Um.
Once his corpse is buried, he’ll provide nurishment to countless worms, bacteria, and fungi.
Sorry, that’s all I got. When he exploited the deaths of the 9/11 victims to advance his own agenda of hate, I lost the last vestiges of respect I had for him as a carbon-based lifeform. I’m sure someone loved him and misses him, but I can’t pretend that I think he was something he was not, that being a decent human being. If there is a hëll, I’m sure a 10th circle was added in the 20th century for the televangelists.
So, while I offer my condolences to his family and friends, in my gut I still feel the world is a better place without him.
Jeffrey: “In the second case, there are a lot of jokes about Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Ford’s Theater which don’t seem to upset very many people. It’s all pretty complicated, but erring on the side of civility seems like a good idea.”
PAD: A line variously attributed to Carol Burnett, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen is “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”
On the other hand, Johnny Carson often said that even over 100 years later, jokes about Lincoln always bombed on stage, because it’s still “too soon”.
As for the sign about Bush getting a BJ, it’s not really new. I’ve seen similar signs like that on the news and the web for the past 3-4 years.
It probably is too late to hope that enough of the republicans in Congress could be weened off the Kool-Aid in order to make an impeachment and removal of the decider (or his he the conductor now?) possible. Our only recourse now is to wait out the remaining 19 months and let history be the final judge.
One of the arguments against Bush and his crew’s “interrogation” techniques is that we, the Americans, the Good Guys, should have a better moral standard then those we condemn for acts of torture.
So… we’re comparing the reaction to the death of a moral hypocrits to torture?
Isn’t that about on the same level as those who say it’s ridiculous to compare Bush to Hitler?
As Den just said, I’m at least honest in my views of Falwell. I’m not claiming any sort of moral righteousness that should place me above such thoughts.
But that’s the sort of righteousness that Bush, Falwell and others espouse when they’re just full of it.
I don’t go around every day saying “Yep, he’s going to hëll, she’s going to hëll, that group of people are going to hëll just because the Bible dropped a line here and there saying something they did is bad”. Which is how Falwell lived his life by trying to force his brand of religion down our throats.
Just like I think Bush & Cheney have also now earned themselves a spot somewhere near where Falwell will spend eternity, based on their actions during this administration.
All that abuse of power and religion… the irony that it’s deserving of a trip to Hëll is telling.
Yolanda Denise King, eldest child of Martin Luther King Jr., also passed away late last night at the age of 51.
Den – Johnny Carson would have known what jokes worked, but it’s obvious that the sharpness of any distaste for Lincoln jokes has declined after 142 years. I’m a little surprised that Hitler jokes are sometimes considered not-too-distasteful. Perhaps the feeling of connection to recent history has declined in recent times. This is completely changing the subject, I suppose, but I think two areas of thought about Hitler are disturbing: 1. People see the events of WWII as long ago and unconnected to our world: I don’t agree, and I think being unconcerned with such an important event is irresponsible. 2. (This one is very hard to express clearly) The Holocaust is seen as a single, unrepeatable anomaly – an evil beyond humanity, done with, and never to be repeated. It was done by real people, could happen again, and shouldn’t be marginalized. Hitler was not something outside of Homo Sapiens, but rather an expression of the worst in the species. If we see him as an unrepeatable freak of nature and history we are unprepared for future atrocities – also by monstrously evil, but still human, people.
One of the cruelest ideas that “Christians” like Falwell supported was that whoever disagreed with their narrow-minded views would be eternally punished in Hëll. I can’t bring myself to wish that much torment to anyone.
I don’t feel happy nor sad that he died. What makes me sad is that Falwell’s poisonous ideas are still very much alive, and new defenders of bigotry and hatred will raise to take his place.
“Actually Manny, I think you mean the latter. The former here would be “agree” and your subsequent remarks suggest you don’t have a high opinion of the man.”
D’OH!!!! Ya got me!!!
Just gotta clarify, I won’t celebrate or exult in the death of the flawed individual. All manner of bad karma there. For better or worse, he believed the ideological sewage that he spouted.
I will, however, take a HUGE freakin’ degree of joy that at least one prominent hate monger is no longer polluting the airwaves. I will also find humour in his probable shock in where he ends up.
To paraphrase Dan St. Cloud in his “Afterlife Allstar Game”, “Also here in Hëll, Jerry Falwell, and boy does he look surprised!”
Falwell spent most of his time spouting fear and hate. He used political influence in attempt to shape policy to suit his fear and hate.
“Actually Manny, I think you mean the latter. The former here would be “agree” and your subsequent remarks suggest you don’t have a high opinion of the man.”
D’OH!!!! Ya got me!!!
Just gotta clarify, I won’t celebrate or exult in the death of the flawed individual. All manner of bad karma there. For better or worse, he believed the ideological sewage that he spouted.
I will, however, take a HUGE freakin’ degree of joy that at least one prominent hate monger is no longer polluting the airwaves. I will also find humour in his probable shock in where he ends up.
To paraphrase Dan St. Cloud in his “Afterlife Allstar Game”, “Also here in Hëll, Jerry Falwell, and boy does he look surprised!”
Falwell spent most of his time spouting fear and hate. He used political influence in attempt to shape policy to suit his fear and hate.
Sorry ’bout the double post. Cheap PC in the driver’s room in Vancouver. Microsoft Culpa.
I take no pleasure in the passing of someone whose major crime was having opinions with which I disagreed.
Class act.
without going into my opinions of any president, i tend to agree with an opinion expressed in an issue of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman in which Richard Nixon said (and this is an approximate quote without my reference in front of me)
“While you’re in office you’ll be the worst president in history until you’re out of office, then it’s some other áššhølë’s turn.”
in other words, we’ll hate the next guy as much as we hate this guy.
Unless the next guy is as incompetant, arrogant, crony-loving, and autocratic as this chump, I seriously doubt he will be as hated as much as Bush.
“how much time must pass before it’s OK to joke about it?”
Yesterday I saw a Washington Mutual commercial where one of the old fashioned bankers said they knew who was on the grassy knoll in Dallas. I know a lot of people that would think that was exceedingly poor taste. It’s not a question of the passage of time.
“It’s not a question of the passage of time.”
Sure it is. Nothing in your example shows that it isn’t.
In the last few years I’ve seen several JFK assassination jokes that I thought were funny. Your friends may not like them, but they don’t speak for everyone. At one time they *did* speak for everyone as nobody would even have attempted those jokes five or even ten years after the assassination.
Is everyone is going to like jokes about the death of JFK? No, but a lot more like those jokes now than did twenty years ago. Twenty years from now, even more people will be OK with the jokes.
Jason, sorry, I mistyped. I meant to put in, “It’s not JUST a question of the passage of time.”
Sorry.
Unless the next guy is as incompetant, arrogant, crony-loving, and autocratic as this chump, I seriously doubt he will be as hated as much as Bush.
Yeah. Nowadays most just politicians cause boredom and a sort of low-level distaste. The guy needs to be something special to provocke the sort of visceral hatred directed at Bush.
I don’t remember any US President being so hated since Nixon. Clinton and Reagan were intensely disliked by people in the opposite side of the political spectrum as they were, but not to the level Bush is.
I actually have this on a button…
Sure it is. Nothing in your example shows that it isn’t.
“We could go back to Dallas, 1963, stand on the grassy knoll and shout ‘Duck!'” – Kryten, “Timeslides”, which aired in December 1989, a ‘mere’ 25 years after JFK’s assassination.
Probably not the first ‘grassy knoll’ joke, but one of the best, imo.
And then Red Dwarf would later base a whole episode around JFK’s assassination and changing history.
But is it merely the passage of time? Yes and no.
Yes because time heals all wounds, as it were. But also no because it also depends on the butt of the joke.
Take South Park and the whole Steve Erwin bit and how much flak they took. Same for Bill Maher and that costume party he went to.
Replace Erwin with Hussein right after Hussein’s hanging and I bet nobody bats an eye, at least in most of the world.
Jesus. I was really sleep-deprived yesterday and it affected me WAY more than I thought. I re-read my first post in response to Rob Brown and it reads like some kinda psychotic breakdown.
There was a difference? I didn’t notice one. Anybody else? Guys?
So… we’re comparing the reaction to the death of a moral hypocrites to torture? Isn’t that about on the same level as those who say it’s ridiculous to compare Bush to Hitler?
Yes and no. I’m not comparing the acts themselves as much as the mindset behind them.
Those here who have condemned Bush for his torture policies have done so by pointing out that his actions portray America to the world as no better then the terrorist by acting in a manner that America condemns others for. If America tortures prisoners, then America is acting in a matter no better then its opponents in this war. The moral high ground is lost and the ability to condemn or speak on the subject is weakened considerably.
The same thing holds true here. The same people who condemn Bush over his “interrogation” policies are the same people who condemn Coulter, Savage, Robertson, etc. for praying for another’s death, suggesting that assignation would be a good idea or actively expressing glee that someone “got what they deserved” by dieing when all the other person was truly guilty of was thinking, believing or speaking in a manner that was politically or religiously at odds with what they felt was right.
If you engage in the exact same thing, how are you any different or better then Coulter or Robertson? Falwell was, in my eyes, deeply flawed. He was not however a murderer, torturer or fascist dictator. He simply spoke what he believed. I may have expressed outrage at it from time to time, but he had a right as an American to think and speak as he wished. For that matter, so do you, Coulter, Savage and Robertson. You all have the absolute right to express glee and joy at the death of and idea of afterlife suffering of someone who you politically disagreed with on the day or week of their passing. Others have the right to point out that “birds of a feather…
I’m not claiming any sort of moral righteousness that should place me above such thoughts.
Nor am I. I admitted that my first thoughts at the news were less the decent. The difference between myself and a Coulter or Savage though is that I actually look at what I’m thinking and determine whether or not I want to be that scummy. Actually, I’m sure they do as well. They just come up with a different answer.
I’m not going to condemn someone for their first thoughts on a subject. It’s just where they chose to go with those first thoughts that shows their character. It’s a bit like stealing. I doubt that there’s a person here who hasn’t thought at least once in their life, if only for just a fleeting second, that they could get away with slipping off with something they really wanted but couldn’t afford or maybe driving off at the pump. What separates the decent folks from the not so decent folks is whether they act on that thought or whether they chose to kick it back down.
I’m not even going to just condemn people for just their first words on a subject. We’ve all said something that we thought the wiser of a few minutes or hours later. What separates some people from others is whether or not they decide that what they said wasn’t appropriate or not and whether or not they learn from their past statements and retractions.
Yesterday I saw a Washington Mutual commercial where one of the old fashioned bankers said they knew who was on the grassy knoll in Dallas.
Duh, everybody knows that by know. It was Lister, Rimmer, The Cat, Kryten and JFK from an alternate future.
I think one thing with jokes about death are that they’re actually kind of generic. Some of the jokes in film, TV and standup about historical figures and their deaths are almost in the vein of insert-name-here types of jokes. Another thing is that most of the jokes are more about death and the shock of death rather then about whether or not the historical figure deserved it or whether or not the were suffering in the afterlife. Then of course you get to the subject of violent bášŧárdš like Hitler. Izzard killed with a line about Hitler’s Honeymoon death. I doubt many would argue against joy in Hitler’s death at the time of his death or now because of the nature of his crimes and because of the war he was waging. I also doubt that many would argue that Hitler is spending his afterlife in Hëll. However, much as with Bush, Falwell was no Hitler.
Ðámņ you Craig J. Ries, you beat me to the Red Dwarf example. A pox on you and DVD collection!!!
For the record, I chose my words very carefully in my “in for a big surprise” post. I specifically wanted to avoid sounding like I was consigning him to the pit, which is a decision I don’t get to make.
I was thinking more of Falwell showing up in Heaven and being greeted by, say, Liberace and Susan Sontag, with Albert Einstein and Mohandas Gandhi having a conversation nearby. Y’know, being immediately confronted by the presence of people he was sure would be excluded because of what they believed or how they behaved.
Someone upstairs in this thread made a comment about Falwell’s thinking that voting anything other than GOP is against God’s will, (I think it was Jeffrey Frawley) and I have to wonder about something. If voting for the GOP is with God’s will, then, I have to ask, what the heck do people in other countries do?
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at May 16, 2007 01:21 PM
There was a difference? I didn’t notice one. Anybody else? Guys?
You suck. You really do.
Paul1963,
Your comments weren’t really a major thing on my radar as much as those that expressed glee. Moreover, my initial comments weren’t directed solely at those comments here. I was working overtime as security for a function at the Library of Virginia when the news broke. There were lots of people from lots of different backgrounds around me for quite a few hours. On the drive home, I channel surfed the XM and listened to bits a pieces here and there as well. The comments I was hearing all day were disgusting.
The comments from strangers, passers-by and people calling in to chat shows were one thing. I have no idea how some of them have expressed their views on other topics and events. The ones I found particularly disgusting were from those who’s comments on other topics, especially those directed at imbeciles like Coulter, I was familiar with.
You either stand for a principle or you don’t. You either believe something is wrong or you don’t. You cannot claim that something is wrong when done by someone who is your political, ideological or religious opposite and then declare that it’s fine and dandy to do yourself while excusing it as just being honest. The sad thing about the quality of character in a Coulter, Savage, Robertson, Beck, Falwell, etc. is that they likely believe some of what they’re saying as well. I’m sure that they really are vile enough and low enough to enjoy the death of someone they don’t like and to express glee at the passing of someone who dared to stand on the other side of the political fence as them.
If you condemn them or question their humanity for such actions and statements, what does that say about those who now do the same thing? Are Coulter and Savage better people then some of their critics because they’re merely human pond scum while their critics are both human pond scum and first class hypocrites? I’d like to think not, but the words being uttered and written by many in the last twenty-four hours tend to confirm the worst of their critics.
“I’m a little surprised that Hitler jokes are sometimes considered not-too-distasteful. Perhaps the feeling of connection to recent history has declined in recent times.”
A lot of people forget that when the film “The Producers” originally debuted, Mel Brooks took a TON of heat. WW II was only two decades prior, and having a funny Nazi (the playwright) and singing and dancing Hitlers was considered really pushing the envelope. Watching the more recent musical and film thereof, one of the reasons it’s not quite as effective is that the passage of time has removed the sting of the spectacularly bad taste involved in making a Hitler musical.
Legend has it that when “The Producers” premiered, people really DID walk out of screening during “Springtime for Hitler” because they just couldn’t take it. Brooks was accused of diminishing the evil of Nazism by turning them into figures of fun; his response was that he in fact hated Nazis so much that making fun of them was his way of dealing with that hatred.
PAD
Mel Brooks also took a lot of heat for Blazing Saddles.
Sadly, despite the fact that it skewers racists mercilessly, that movie wouldn’t even get made in today’s climate.
Brooks was accused of diminishing the evil of Nazism by turning them into figures of fun; his response was that he in fact hated Nazis so much that making fun of them was his way of dealing with that hatred.
He’s also made a good point since then, which is that the way to combat demagougery is not with more demagougery, since the dictators (or whatever) are better at it than you are; instead, you fight them by making them look ridiculous, so it’s harder for people to take them seriously. (Especially because those of that stripe are notorious for not having senses of humor about themselves–however angry people got at the time, Hitler would have been even angrier.)
Brooks said at the time of the musical that he only got one complaint about the Nazi material, and that was from someone who seemed to have misunderstood it.
He’s also made a good point since then, which is that the way to combat demagoguery is not with more demagoguery, since the dictators (or whatever) are better at it than you are; instead, you fight them by making them look ridiculous, so it’s harder for people to take them seriously.
People seemed to have understood this just fine when Hitler was actually alive and very much a threat. Look at what the 3 Stooges and Bugs Bunny did to the bášŧárd.
I wonder if there were any complaints about Hogan’s Heroes? The nazis were not only stupid but, in a few cases, kind of lovable (though I guess Sgt Schultz was never portrayed as a nazi so much as just a regular soldier and even Col Klink had moments where I thought he revealed a distaste for the German regime…or at least, that’s what I remember from watching it as a kid.
While I don’t always appreciate Mel Brooks’s sense of humor, his approach in “The Producers” was extremely bright. Making the atrocious ridiculous is one thing; Making it sympathetic is entirely different. It is widely reported that Werner Klemperer (like his father, Otto, a Jewish refugee from Germany in 1933) agreed to play Colonel Klink in “Hogan’s Heroes” only after being assured that Klink would never succeed or even appear competent. John Banner, who played Sergeant Schultz, was an Austrian Jew who had been interned in one of the earliest concentration camps, and he might well have had similar demands. I still think the show was in poor taste and rarely funny, but it didn’t lend any dignity to the Nazis.
I wonder if there were any complaints about Hogan’s Heroes?
I’d say that there likely were. My great aunt never watched that program and reviled the concept of it. She couldn’t figure out what could be slightly funny in anything set in the German POW camps of WWII.
God help you if you mentioned liking the show around her. After ten minutes of lecture, you almost wished you had never heard of the show.
I’ve never understood the indignant have-some-respect-for-the-dead admonishment. As corpses (as in life) people should get the level of respect they earn and have shown to others.
So as far as Falwell is concerned, I am glad he’s gone. And just hope whoever follows him isn’t worse.
PAD: Everyone has loved ones, friends, etc., and the knowledge that *someone* out there is grieving his passing precludes me from thinking much beyond, “Oh well.”
PAD: If Osama bin Laden’s head turns up tomorrow, I’m not going to give a dámņ about anything other than, “Good, the bášŧárd’s dead.”
There are lots of people who would grieve Bin Laden’s passing. So why shouldn’t you be precluded from thinkin much beyone “Oh, well” for him?
I don’t think how I feel about someone dying should be based on how someone else feels about them. Sympathy for those who grieve, hmm, perhaps. But for the departed, if they were someone I disliked as much as Falwell? Glad to see ’em gone. Wish it had been sooner.
Reap what you sow, Jerry.
I’ve never understood the indignant have-some-respect-for-the-dead admonishment.
It’s not a matter of showing respect for the dead. It’s a matter of having respect for one’s self.
I will not step forward and praise the man. I will not discuss his good points only in the week of his passing. I will not claim that he was a good man for his cause and an honest defender of his beliefs. I will not suddenly cease discussing what I see as his failings or the things I found reprehensible about him in the foreseeable future. And I will not for one moment mourn his passing.
However, there is a difference between that and publicly stating great joy and enjoyment in the man’s death. Both may be seen as honest, but the one is far more crass then the other ever will be. And there’s the nut of the matter. How low do you want to go? Do you want to be a Coulter, Savage or O’Reilly or do you want to be better then those that you condemn.
That’s something I always find to be an ironic failing of many fans of heroic fiction. We get together on BBs. blogs, conventions and in other social gatherings and talk about the higher, nobler spirit of mankind and discuss what we see as the ideals to live by. Most boards that are frequented heavily by comic, sci-fi and fantasy fans have a high ratio of posts denouncing some of the shriller and nastier voices on the Right over larger issues (Iraq) and smaller issues (taking glee in someone’s death or the prospect of their death) everyday. So, do many of those fans who speak so highly of ideals, personal integrity and nobler aspirations while condemning the failings of others take the opportunities to prove that they actually are better then those they condemn? No, many of them instead embrace the very nature they condemn in others. Just as many on the left are doing now with Falwell’s death.
I’m not going to claim to be anything close to perfect or a saint, but I do try to not be that which I condemn. If I catch myself doing or saying something for which I have condemned another for, then I tend to reevaluate whether there was validity in that persons position or whether I need to knock off being a hypocrite or scumbag myself. In this case, I looked at my first thoughts on Falwell’s death, looked at my thoughts and feelings about the comments of the most vile on the right and chose the path that was better then theirs. I will not take joy in the death of a man who’s only failing, to my POV, was that he was politically and ideologically opposed to me. He wasn’t a Hitler, Pol Pot, Bin Laden or Third World Warlord. He didn’t march on cities, towns and villages and commit genocide. He didn’t round up people who he deemed inferior and march them into gas chambers. He never once, to my knowledge, masterminded the death of 3000 people from a single terrorist act. He merely spoke views that were in opposition to my own.
For that I will not express joy or glee in his passing or his possible fate in the afterlife. If you wish to count Ann Coulter, Savage and Bill O’Reilly as your spiritual contemporaries and role models, that’s fine by me. Just don’t act surprised if people call you on your use of Coulterisms when you act publicly as she would or point out the total hypocrisy in your statements against others you don’t like acting as you do.
Reap what you sow, Sean.
Bill Mulligan asked: “I wonder if there were any complaints about Hogan’s Heroes?”
When I was in college, I remember someone painted both Hogan’s Heroes and M*A*S*H with the same “make fun of war” brush, and said they were, therefore, beneath contempt. I countered (and I believe others did, too) that while he may have had a point regarding the former, he was off base concerning the latter. M*A*S*H mocked many things about the military, such as officious officers or ridiculous regulations- things real soldiers have probably been doing ever since armies existed- but it never made the Korean war (or war in general) a punchline.
As to Hogan’s Heroes, Werner Klemperer, who escaped from Nazi Germany (or one of its satellite nations, I forget the exact details) was adamant that Col. Klink never win. I believe he once said that if Klink ever came out looking good (at least in comparison to Col. Hogan and the other POWS; he couldn’t help but look good compared to the SS characters), he’d have left the show. Perhaps playing an incompetent German officer (and probable Nazi party member) was his way of “getting back” at the Nazis.
As to Falwell’s death, part of me hopes that if there’s an afterlife, it’ll be one of those Twilight Zone type “you get what you deserve” environments, where his harmful actions and attitudes come back to bite him on the ášš. On the other hand, another part of me hopes that if there is an afterlife, it’s the kind where his negative traits have been expunged, and he’s no longer burdened by bigotry, prejudice and hate.
As to the original subject of the thread, Clinton’s impeachment was a sideshow of ridiculous and costly partisan posturing. Having an affair (and lying about it) was wrong, but it ain’t anywhere near high crimes and misdemeanors. What Bush and Cheney have done is far worse. Both deserve to be impeached.
And convicted.
Rick
I wonder if there were any complaints about Hogan’s Heroes?
When I was in high school, I remember my mom saying that one of my parents’ friends detested the very premise of the show. At the time, I thought that was rather an absurd, extremist reaction.
That is, until I met the man. It turned out that he was a WWII vet. He didn’t see action in Europe though; he was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. After talking with him a while on the street purely by chance (I was home from college and wearing my fraternity letters. He was out raking his yard and saw me. It turned out we belonged to the same frat), I completely understood why he wouldn’t find a wartime prison camp a place for comedy.
There’s a reason why Fred Phelps is universally considered such a sorry excuse for a human being. It’s because he pickets the funerals of people who have died, exploiting the suffering of those who loved them for cheap political points and to make himself feel important. He’s a troll with ambition.
If, by some happenstance, he one day actually pickets the funeral of someone who was a rotten person in life, who will be missed only by his family…it won’t Make. Any. Difference.
Look, as I’ve said, I’m not spotless clean on this, though I would hope that my standard on whose death elicits glee in me does not include those who merely disagree with me and sincerely want to change the world through legal means. I understand how those who are acting this way feel. But even the worst regular poster on this board is better than that.
If by saved you are referring to some kind of afterlife, my understanding is that Judaism establishes no belief in an afterlife. On an episode of Northern Exposure, a priest asked Joel how the Jews tolerate in life the idea of absolute void after death, and he said he avoided thinking about it.
Dante was Catholic, which follows a strict adherence to canon, and at least for his time rewards and punishment were not so much issued in the afterlife as the dead continued to behave as they did in life. All of the tortures in the Inferno? Those were meant to represent what we who are guilty do to ourselves while we are alive. There’s nothing stopping the dámņëd from going purgatory to transform their behavior if they choose. There are simply people who are relentless in their behavior.
That was Job’s challenge to God, was it not? And God never said Job was wrong — He said Job was as right as any of the men among him but still invoked His privilege as God to do as He pleased. And Job bowed to God, as God bet Satan he would. Job’s grace in bowing to the God that arbitrarily allowed him to be punished (and in contrast, as Jung pointed out, God’s lack of grace) is more pronounced when you remember the pre-Christian God offered no afterlife.
As far as Falwell wouldn’t tolerate heaven as you present it, he might choose to serve God hëll — as the Muslim portrayal of Satan seems to do. In the Muslim version of the fall, Satan doesn’t refuse God’s command to bow to man because it’s beneath him, but because Satan is God’s biggest fan.
Here’s my final thought on Falwell: I think he was a despicable person. I’m sorry, but I can’t suddenly change my opinion or pretend it doesn’t exist just because he’s dead. It’s not that I want to go and dance on his grave, but I just can’t force myself to feel bad about his demise either.
As for Hogan’s Heroes, I never thought the movie was in poor taste, precisely because it always made the Nazis look foolish and inept. As Steven Spielberg once said, you can never go wrong with Nazis as villains.
Posted by: Bill Myers at May 15, 2007 11:15 PM
Rob, as soon as I hit the submit button on my last post I regretted it.
I don’t think you’re stupid and I’m sorry for ragging on you like that.
Thanks for apologizing.
For the record, no, I wasn’t high, I was just taking you literally. You had said:
“Nevertheless, I believe it is unwise to second-guess God’s will when it comes to who will or will not be saved (assuming the Heaven/Hëll dichotomy is indeed the model upon which the afterlife is based). If there is a God — and I am confident that there is — He is to us as we are to amoebas. Claiming to know the mind of God is, at best, a hubristic conceit.”
The first sentence says it is unwise to second-guess God’s will. I took this entire paragraph to mean that it was not only impossible to know the mind of God, but also that we shouldn’t question God’s decisions, since that is what “second-guessing” means. And that’s why I wrote what I wrote, not because I’d decided to partake of any controlled substance.
Posted by: Craig J. Ries at May 16, 2007 09:37 AM
One of the arguments against Bush and his crew’s “interrogation” techniques is that we, the Americans, the Good Guys, should have a better moral standard then those we condemn for acts of torture.
So… we’re comparing the reaction to the death of a moral hypocrits to torture?
I agree with Jerry’s explanation.
I also feel like mentioning one other thing…
There have been times I haven’t been tolerant, or when I’ve wanted revenge, or when I’ve been judgmental. I haven’t always been that great a person, I acknowledge that. In fact, there have been times where I’ve been a total douchebag. I acknowledge that with no small amount of shame and disgust with myself when I remember what I did. Am I, therefore, cut from the same cloth as Falwell?
Perhaps there are some similarities. Perhaps too many for me to claim the moral high ground, I don’t know. There is, however, one major difference between myself and Falwell: even though both of us have acted like jerks in the past, only one of us has ever claimed to be a devout Christian who was committed to always doing exactly what Jesus would have wanted of him.
If Falwell insisted on calling himself a Christian, he should have tried his dámņdëšŧ to act like Jesus. He should have asked himself every single day “What would Jesus do?” From all indications, he didn’t. Jesus said to forgive your enemies, to turn the other cheek, or to at least try. Instead of trying to forgive the perpetrators of 9/11, instead of turning the other cheek, Falwell called for blood (which is also a violation of “Thou shalt not kill” which, although Jesus didn’t bring that particular commandment to Earth, I’m quite sure it got his full endorsement). Not only did Falwell want revenge, he said so on national television. Not only did he recommend killing them, even though the Bible makes it pretty clear that killing is verboten, but he said it should be done “in the name of the Lord.” As far as I know, he never went in front of a camera and said “I really regret saying that. Revenge and killing is not what the Bible teaches us, it is not what God wants, and I am truly sorry for my outburst.” No, he stood by his statement. As far as I know.
I’m not saying that it was wrong to want revenge after 9/11. It’s completely understandable. But somebody calling himself a Christian should have at least made an honest attempt to fight his desire for vengeance. To all appearances, Falwell made no such attempt.
Jesus also taught people not to be judgmental or intolerant. Hëll, Jesus hung around with lepers and prostitutes and accepted just about anybody who approached him. If people didn’t approach him, Jesus certainly didn’t give fiery speeches about how certain people were abominations and would deservedly suffer in hëll for eternity. He told people “judge not, lest ye be judged.” And what did the Reverend Falwell do? He judged. He judged all kinds of people. You only need to look at the quote in my last post to see him judging his ášš off.
So yes, both Falwell and myself at one time or another may have wished ill on other human beings. Yes, both Falwell and myself might have been intolerant at one time or another. Yes, both Falwell and myself may have even intentionally caused anguish to somebody who did not deserve it. Yes, both Falwell and myself may have judged others when we shouldn’t have.
Falwell, however, was supposed to be a Christian, and Christian teachings forbid acting the way he did. So even though both Falwell and myself have been jerks in the past (and I truly hope that after it’s all tallied up, it’ll turn out that I’ve been less of a jerk overall than him), Falwell’s a much, much, much bigger hypocrite than I could ever be. Anybody who claims to be a Christian and doesn’t even TRY to adhere to Christian teachings is a hypocrite, I firmly believe that. I also feel that way about all the Christians who are pro-death penalty, btw. They’re in favor of criminals being killed and yet they claim to hold the Bible sacred, despite the Bible saying it is unacceptable to kill? Pick one or the other, people. You can’t have both.
RE: How soon is too soon to tell a joke about something bad?
Well, I’d say that there isn’t any real formula that covers all jokes in all circumstances. It depends on the audience, the timing, and how funny the joke is to begin with.
Harkening back to a previous thread about “appropriate” work conversation, I know for a fact that, working in a health care environment, there are conversations and jokes on a regular basis that would never fly in, say, an office environment. For many people, humor is a way of coping with practically having the Grim Reaper as a coworker. I can only imagine what the conversations are like on the job for Jerry Chandler.
-Rex Hondo-