Hitchens slams Falwell

ballz2wallz · 05-16-2007, 04:01 PM

We knew it was bound to happen, and it only took hours before the liberal blogs were foaming at the mouth, but this is insane! Hitchens has NO respect for the man.

YouTube Video

Transcript here for those who can't see it:

COOPER: Author and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens is about as far from Jerry Falwell in his beliefs as one could get. Christian fundamentalists are a major target of his new book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." He joins me now from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Christopher, I'm not sure if you believe in heaven, but, if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell is in it?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "VANITY FAIR": No. And I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to.

COOPER: What is it about him that brings up such vitriol?

HITCHENS: The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?

People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. The whole consideration of this -- of this horrible little person is offensive to very, very many of us who have some regard for truth and for morality, and who think that ethics do not require that lies be told to children by evil old men, that we're -- we're not told that people who believe like Falwell will be snatched up into heaven, where I'm glad to see he skipped the rapture, just found on the floor of his office, while the rest of us go to hell.

How dare they talk to children like this? How dare they raise money from credulous people on their huckster-like (INAUDIBLE) radio stations, and fly around in private jets, as he did, giggling and sniggering all the time at what he was getting away with?

Do you get an idea now of what I mean to say?

COOPER: Yes, no, I think -- I think you're making yourself very clear.

I mean, I...

(CROSSTALK)

HITCHENS: How dare he say, for example, that the Antichrist is already present among us and is an adult male Jew, while, all the time, fawning on the worst elements in Israel, with his other hand pumping anti-Semitic innuendoes into American politics, along with his friends Robertson and Graham?

COOPER: And, yet, there are...

(CROSSTALK)

HITCHENS: ... encouraging -- encouraging -- encouraging the most extreme theocratic fanatics and maniacs on the West Bank and in Gaza not to give an inch of what he thought of was holy land to the people who already live there, undercutting and ruining every democratic and secularist in the Jewish state in the name of God?

(CROSSTALK)

HITCHENS: This is -- this is -- he's done us an enormous, enormous disservice by this sort of demagogy.

COOPER: What do you think it says about America that -- and politics in America, that he was so successful in mobilizing huge swathes of the country to come out and vote?

HITCHENS: I'm not certain at all that he did deserve this reputation. And I... COOPER: You don't think he does?

HITCHENS: Well, I'm not certain that he was a mobilizer. He certainly hoped to be one.

Well, the fact is that the country suffers, to a considerable extent, from paying too much, by way of compliment, to anyone who can describe themselves as a person of faith, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Chaucerian frauds, people who are simply pickpockets, who -- and frauds -- who prey on the gullible and...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Do you believe he believed what he spoke?

HITCHENS: Of course not. He woke up every morning, as I say, pinching his chubby little flanks and thinking, I have got away with it again.

COOPER: You think he was a complete fraud, really?

HITCHENS: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: You don't believe that, I mean, in his reading of the Bible, you don't think he was sincere in his -- whether you agree or not with his reading of the Bible, you don't think he was sincere in what he spoke?

HITCHENS: No. I think he was a conscious charlatan and bully and fraud.

And I think, if he read the Bible at all -- and I would doubt that he could actually read any long book of -- at all -- that he did so only in the most hucksterish, as we say, Bible-pounding way.

I'm going to repeat what I said before about the Israeli question. It's very important. Jerry Falwell kept saying to his own crowd, yes, you have got to like the Jews, because they can make more money in 10 minutes than you can make in a lifetime. He was always full, as his friends Robertson and Graham are and were, of anti- Semitic innuendo.

Yet, in the most base and hypocritical way, he encouraged the worst elements among Jewry. He got Menachem Begin to give him the Jabotinsky Medal, celebrating an alliance between Christian fundamentalism and Jewish fanaticism that has ruined the chances for peace in the Middle East.

Lots of people are going to die and are already leading miserable lives because of the nonsense preached by this man, and because of the absurd way that we credit anyone who can say they're a person of faith.

Look, the president endangers us this way. He meets a KGB thug like Vladimir Putin, and, because he is wearing a crucifix around his neck, says, I'm dealing with a man of faith. He's a man of goodwill.

Look what Putin has done to American and European interests lately. What has the president said to take back this absurd remark? It's time to stop saying that, because someone preaches credulity and credulousness, and claims it as a matter of faith, that we should respect them.

The whole life of Falwell shows this is an actual danger to democracy, to culture, to civilization. That's what my book is all about.

COOPER: The book is "God Is Not Great."

Christopher Hitchens, appreciate you being on the program.

HITCHENS: Thanks for having me.

And again Hitchens attacks him even worse on his article at Slate:

Faith-Based Fraud
Jerry Falwell's foul rantings prove you can get away with anything if you have "Reverend" in front of your name.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2007, at 12:46 PM ET

The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled "credulous idiot." The first such category consists of those who expected Falwell (and themselves) to be bodily raptured out of the biosphere and assumed into the heavens, leaving pilotless planes and driverless trucks and taxis to crash with their innocent victims as collateral damage. This group is so stupid and uncultured that it may perhaps be forgiven. It is so far "left behind" that almost its only pleasure is to gloat at the idea of others being abandoned in the same condition.

The second such category is of slightly more importance, because it consists of the editors, producers, publicists, and a host of other media riffraff who allowed Falwell to prove, almost every week, that there is no vileness that cannot be freely uttered by a man whose name is prefaced with the word Reverend. Try this: Call a TV station and tell them that you know the Antichrist is already on earth and is an adult Jewish male. See how far you get. Then try the same thing and add that you are the Rev. Jim-Bob Vermin. "Why, Reverend, come right on the show!" What a fool Don Imus was. If he had paid the paltry few bucks to make himself a certified clergyman, he could be jeering and sneering to the present hour.

Falwell went much further than his mad 1999 assertion about the Jewish Antichrist. In the time immediately following the assault by religious fascism on American civil society in September 2001, he used his regular indulgence on the airwaves to commit treason. Entirely exculpating the suicide-murderers, he asserted that their acts were a divine punishment of the United States. Again, I ask you to imagine how such a person would be treated if he were not supposedly a man of faith.

One of his associates, Bailey Smith, once opined that "God does not hear the prayers of a Jew." This is one of the few anti-Semitic remarks ever made that has a basis in fact, since God does not exist and does not attend to any prayers, but Smith was not quite making that point. Along with his friend Pat Robertson, who believes in secret Jewish control of the world of finance, and Billy Graham, who boasted to Richard Nixon that the Jews had never guessed what he truly thought of them, Falwell kept alive the dirty innuendo about Jews that so many believing Christians seem to need. This would be bad enough in itself, and an additional reason to deplore the free ride he was given on television, if his trade-off had not been even worse.

Seeking to deflect the charge of anti-Jewish prejudice, Falwell adopted the cause of the most thuggish and demented Israeli settlers, proclaiming that their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was a holy matter and hoping that they might help to bring on Armageddon and the return of the Messiah. A detail in this ghastly narrative, as adepts of the "Left Behind" series will know, is that the return of the risen Christ will require the mass slaughter or mass conversion of all Jews. This consideration did not prevent Menachem Begin from awarding Falwell the Jabotinsky Centennial Medal in 1980 and has not inhibited other Israeli extremists from embracing him and his co-thinkers ever since. All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin. Trying to interrupt the fiesta of piety on national television on the night of Falwell's death, I found myself waiting while Ralph Reed went all moist about the role of the departed in empowering "people of faith." Here was the hypocritical casino-based Christian who sought and received the kosher stamp from Jack Abramoff. Perfect.

Like many fanatical preachers, Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others. His obsession with homosexuality was on a par with his lip-smacking evocations of hellfire. From his wobbly base of opportunist fund raising and degree-mill money-spinning in Lynchburg, Va., he set out to puddle his sausage-sized fingers into the intimate arrangements of people who had done no harm. Men of this type, if they cannot persuade enough foolish people to part with their savings, usually end up raving on the street and waving placards about the coming day of judgment. But Falwell, improving on the other Chaucerian frauds from Oral Roberts to Jim Bakker to Ted Haggard, not only had a TV show of his own but was also regularly invited onto mainstream ones.

The evil that he did will live after him. This is not just because of the wickedness that he actually preached, but because of the hole that he made in the "wall of separation" that ought to divide religion from politics. In his dingy racist past, Falwell attacked those churchmen who mixed the two worlds of faith and politics and called for civil rights. Then he realized that two could play at this game and learned to play it himself. Then he won the Republican Party over to the idea of religious voters and faith-based fund raising. And now, by example at least, he has inspired emulation in many Democrats and liberals who would like to borrow the formula. His place on the cable shows will be amply filled by Al Sharpton: another person who can get away with anything under the rubric of Reverend. It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."

Seriously, this guy is vile. This seems to be happening more and more often, that liberals are celebrating the deaths of people they don't like, even calling for assassinations (or joking about it) of those in our government. Can you find conservatives doing things like this? I've not been able to, and I certainly think it's horrific.

JaJae · 05-16-2007, 04:04 PM

Did he put someone on to defend him and give both sides? Is this a news show or an opinion show.. I can't tell.

ballz2wallz · 05-16-2007, 04:06 PM

Originally Posted by JaJae

Did he put someone on to defend him and give both sides? Is this a news show or an opinion show.. I can't tell.

The transcripts from the whole show are on the link I provided. It seems to me that he was pretty much trying to bash Falwell the whole time, or at least present people with strong opinions against Falwell for the majority of the time. He does have some that liked Falwell on there though.

DosEquis · 05-16-2007, 04:10 PM

I find irony in things like... Imus calls a black woman basketball team "nappy headed ho'z"...gets fired..and his ass chewed all over the news. Falwell and Robertson say things like "those people died in hurricanes because we tolerate gays" ..yet they get a free pass

Scrum · 05-16-2007, 04:11 PM

Originally Posted by DosEquis

I find irony in things like... Imus calls a black woman basketball team "nappy headed ho'z"...gets fired..and his ass chewed all over the news. Falwell and Robertson say things like "those people died in hurricanes because we tolerate gays" ..yet they get a free pass

It's because people think they talk to jesus.

DosEquis · 05-16-2007, 04:14 PM

Though extremely harsh... i have to say i agree with most of what he said and described.

Diamond Cross · 05-16-2007, 04:15 PM

People are always more willing to forgive people they like as oppose to people they don't like.

ballz2wallz · 05-16-2007, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by DosEquis

I find irony in things like... Imus calls a black woman basketball team "nappy headed ho'z"...gets fired..and his ass chewed all over the news. Falwell and Robertson say things like "those people died in hurricanes because we tolerate gays" ..yet they get a free pass

It was liberals that attacked Imus, and many Christians also agreed that Falwell's comments were over the top

But who was going to fire him? He's the boss

DosEquis · 05-16-2007, 04:20 PM

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

It was liberals that attacked Imus, and many Christians also agreed that Falwell's comments were over the top

But who was going to fire him? He's the boss

Good point on those who attacked Imus. However, there could have been public demand to have him step down from being the boss. He preached intolerance (along with other things) and they agreed for the most part or they would not have been part of his organizations.

Linzyhop · 05-16-2007, 04:22 PM

personally i feel the same way. the guy spewed all sorts of trash about people that didn't believe in what he believed in. According to him I'm going to hell for simply being pagan. good thing i don't believe in hell....

IminWonderland · 05-16-2007, 04:23 PM

Originally Posted by DosEquis

Though extremely harsh... i have to say i agree with most of what he said and described.

me too.

ballz2wallz · 05-16-2007, 04:32 PM

Originally Posted by DosEquis

He preached intolerance (along with other things) and they agreed for the most part or they would not have been part of his organizations.

On the contrary, he preached the Bible. If intolerance is what you get out of the Bible, then so be it.

Linzyhop · 05-16-2007, 04:37 PM

i think the comparison to the crazys that you see on the street holding cardboard cutouts saying we're going to hell if you don't accept Jesus was very apt.

it made me think of the guy in the orange cap with all the jesus handouts when you are walking to Fenway for a game.......

every freakin time without fail.

DosEquis · 05-16-2007, 04:40 PM

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

On the contrary, he preached the Bible. If intolerance is what you get out of the Bible, then so be it.

We should not tolerate intolerance because an antiquated book with antiquated policies says it is correct or just. I have no issue with people using parts of the bible as a moral foundation in their belief system but we have to also look at some of the material with some common sense. Those type of people should seperate the contradictions, like when they say 'god makes us who we are' only to shit on them if it turns out god made him prefer sausage to taco.

ballz2wallz · 05-16-2007, 04:40 PM

Originally Posted by Linzyhop

i think the comparison to the crazys that you see on the street holding cardboard cutouts saying we're going to hell if you don't accept Jesus was very apt.

it made me think of the guy in the orange cap with all the jesus handouts when you are walking to Fenway for a game.......

every freakin time without fail.

The Jesus Guy! He was at the Tool concert last year.

ballz2wallz · 05-16-2007, 04:41 PM

Originally Posted by DosEquis

We should not tolerate intolerance because an antiquated book with antiquated policies says it is correct or just. I have no issue with people using parts of the bible as a moral foundation in their belief system but we have to also look at some of the material with some common sense. Those type of people should seperate the contradictions, like when they say 'god makes us who we are' only to shit on them if it turns out god made him prefer sausage to taco.

He wasn't preaching intolerance my friend. The Bible has nothing but love, for everyone. But it does not accept things simply because the world accepts things. To Christians, sin is sin, but all sinners are accepted and loved. That is the ultimate tolerance. You can't understand that?

Linzyhop · 05-16-2007, 04:44 PM

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

He wasn't preaching intolerance my friend. The Bible has nothing but love, for everyone. But it does not accept things simply because the world accepts things. To Christians, sin is sin, but all sinners are accepted and loved. That is the ultimate tolerance. You can't understand that?

sounds like intolerance to me.

by the way, i'd like to add, the bible pre-st. james version might have more "love" than the st. james version and after... the translators fucked up a bunch....