[Sly Fox]

Prepare to have your blood boiling in this ad hominen blast from Newsweek ...

Don’t Believe the Hype
Jerry Falwell built a megachurch, and created a university-both laudable feats. But his influence on American politics has been vastly overstated.

By Jonathan Alter | Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 15, 2007

I mean no disrespect to the dead, but I take the British view of obituaries, which is to try to capture the true public significance of the person who died, not just his good qualities. The truth about the Rev. Jerry Falwell is that he was a character assassin and hype artist who left little positive impact on the United States—and little negative impact either, for that matter. Besides founding Liberty University, he won’t be remembered as nearly as influential as he’s made out to be.

First, his real legacy: Falwell built the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia from scratch into a mega-church with a 6,000-seat auditorium. And he built Liberty University into a formidable institution that attracts over 20,000 students from around the world and a qualified faculty. Last year, Liberty’s debate team won the national championship. It’s not easy to create a university and Falwell deserves credit as an institution-builder. He will also be remembered through a famous Supreme Court case he lost, Hustler v. Falwell, which established that public figures cannot recover damages when depicted in parodies. (The story of the lawsuit is told in the film, “The People vs. Larry Flynt”). In that sense, he inadvertently helped bolster the First Amendment.

But Falwell’s political legacy is much less impressive. He started out as a segregationist who harshly attacked Martin Luther King Jr. through the 1960s and later called Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa a phony. He was a strong supporter of Israel but openly anti-Semitic, announcing on many occasions that the Antichrist would return as a Jew.

Click Here for Full Story

[TylerBakersGonnaBGreat]

Alter Is a Bad Man. (Thats all Im allowed to say here...) AH! I Will pee on his grave when he dies.

[LUconn]

He was a strong supporter of Israel but openly anti-Semitic

[Sly Fox]

This piece is yet another reason I am so glad to be free from Post-Newsweek as an employer.

[Cider Jim]

I like this part :

And he built Liberty University into a formidable institution that attracts over 20,000 students from around the world and a qualified faculty.

[whmatthews]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the case that Jerry never actually said Tinki-Winki was gay... wasn't it a journalist in the NLJ that said it, but Falwell took the fall b/c it was his newspaper?


By the way..... Tink-Winki's gay. The whole show was.

[Sly Fox]

To be fair, Newsweek also has published another perspective that unfortunately doesn't really answer the blasts in the Alter diatribe.

Growing Up as One of ‘Jerry’s Kids’
What was it like to come of age in Falwell’s church, among card-carrying members of the Moral Majority? A son of Lynchburg, Va., remembers.

By Jon Groat | Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 15, 2007

My mom used to say Jerry could move mountains. Always "Jerry," never "Falwell." In Lynchburg, Va., the Hill City, there are several Falwell families, and depending on which part of the city you're from, there are either good Falwells or bad Falwells. By using "Jerry," there is no ambiguity—everybody knows exactly which Falwell you're talking about. For my family, card-carrying Moral Majority members, he was a good Falwell. And that made me a "Jerry's kid."

My mom and dad fell in love with Jerry and his ministry early on. They were youth-group leaders in their Brown City, Mich., church and they took their high-school kids on cross-country tours of Bible colleges with the hopes the teens would attend Christian universities—"Christian" meaning "born-again" evangelical. (In their strictly interpreted book, Catholicism and backsliding Protestantism wouldn’t get you where you needed to go—namely the Promised Land.) So after one such trip they decided to move all five of us kids to the Blue Ridge Mountains so we could be part of Jerry's growing majority. He was "doing the Lord's work" and they wanted in.

Click Here for Full Story

[TylerBakersGonnaBGreat]

This Alter guy really makes me mad

[paradox]

Alter's way too passionate and situated on the left to be taken seriously as anything other than an opinion guy with strong left leanings.

His left-wing bias really stands out whenever he's been on air with more credible NBC journalists such as Brokaw, Williams, and especially the late Tim Russert.



Love 'em or hate 'em. Jerry's legacy as an evangelical leader and highly visable and influential member of modern conservatism is pretty much set.

[Cider Jim]

Sly, I believe that second article was written by Wilbur Groat's son. Wilbur used to work in LU's College of General Studies, now called CASAS. Wilbur has since passed away, and CASAS has a classroom dedicated to him. Wilbur was one of the godliest men that I have ever known.

[olldflame]

Please don't misconstrue this as being in any way a defense of Alter, but the blatent falsehoods/misstatements aside (Jerry was antisemetic), I honestly thing Jerry would have agreed with his primary conclusion that his true lasting legacy was not whatever effect he had on the political climate. It is TRBC and LU, and the thousands of students and church members whose lives are profoundly affected by those institutions and who take what they have learned with them all over the world. Jerry always emphasized that and downplayed the other.

[paradox]

Jerry was definetely not the least bit anti-semitic. He may have been in his youth, but, all in all, the racist smear is ridiculous and unsubstatiated. I'd be interested to know why you feel that way?

How is it possible for Jerry to have been anti-semitic and yet maintain strong relationships with Israeli Prime Ministers such as Benjamin Netanyahu, among others? Those ties go back at least as far as Prime Minister Begin who reportedly gave him an Israeli lear jet as a gift of friendship from Israel back in the 70's, as reported in the Washington Post. In addition, he was recognized by a long list of conservative jewish groups for his friendship to the nation of Israel.

If you want to say that some of his statements were ungracious towards certain groups such as gays, then yes. At times, he could have shown more mercy than judgement, without a doubt. And it didn't help that certain political operatives in the media were more than willing to stretch, frame, and distort some of his statements beyond recognition, in order to invalidate him, and further their own positions and agendas. But that's another story. And that's what happens when you get involved with politics.

However, the anti-semitism claim is clearly a blatant distortion by the left, and doesn't hold up.

[Baldspot]

Jerry was in no way anti-semitic. He spent two years collaborating with Jewish author Merrill Simon to express his deep commitment to the Jewish people in what resulted as a book entitled "Jerry Falwell and the Jews."


Statements such as the antichrist will probably be a Jew while only meant from a theological pont of view regarding one person - antichrist - have been misconstrued as somehow being meant as an indictment on Jews everywhere.


http://www.amazon.com/Jerry-Falwell-Jew ... 0824603001

[whmatthews]

I don't think oldflame is saying Jerry was antisemetic... I think he's just saying that's a falsehood and focusing on Jerry's legacy.

[absturgill]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the case that Jerry never actually said Tinki-Winki was gay... wasn't it a journalist in the NLJ that said it, but Falwell took the fall b/c it was his newspaper?


By the way..... Tink-Winki's gay. The whole show was.

I believe that it was a story that was originally published in the Washington Post but I'm not sure.

[absturgill]

according to Tinky Winky's Wikipedia page (sigh), I'm wrong. It says:

A February 1999 article in the National Liberty Journal, published by evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell, warned parents that Tinky Winky could be a hidden homosexual symbol, because "he is purple, the gay pride colour, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle, the gay pride symbol". [2]

A spokesman for Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Co., who licenses the characters in the United States, said that the bag was just a magic bag. "The fact that he carries a magic bag doesn't make him a homosexual. It's a children's show, folks. To think we would be putting sexual innuendo in a children's show is kind of outlandish", he added.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinky_Wink ... troversies

[RagingTireFire]

The TinkyWinky story was originally published in the Washington Blade, DC's gay newspaper.

[AZjonz]

My response, "So?"

Congratulations, you have recycled every critique of Jerry and wrote an article. How many times is this going to be done? You would think someone at Newsweek would be qualified enough to bring a new perspective about Jerry's life - good or bad. This is the best he can do? Pathetic.

And so it further proves my point I have believed about the natioanal media - they're here to sell the news, not tell the news.

This is just a flame-throwing article with no substance that is meant to move some mags.

[LUconn]

My response, "So?"

Congratulations, you have recycled every critique of Jerry and wrote an article. How many times is this going to be done? You would think someone at Newsweek would be qualified enough to bring a new perspective about Jerry's life - good or bad. This is the best he can do? Pathetic.

Well. It's somewhat original. It's an attempt by someone who disagrees, trying to pretend like the man wasn't important enough to get upset over. It's a new way of trying to insult him. It's just like a preteen not getting what he wants and then pretending he didn't want it in the first place.

Also my favorite part, the very first thought, "I mean no disrespect to the dead". You know instantly that he plans on disrespecting the dead by prefacing his article with that. No offense Alter, but you're a failure at your chosen profession.


I mean no disrespect Alter, but you are one ugly mofo.

[RagingTireFire]

In the immortal words of Ricky Bobby:

Ricky: With all due respect, Mr. Dennit, I had no idea you'd gotten experimental surgery to have your balls removed.
Mr. Dennit: What did you just say to me?
Ricky: What? I said it with all due respect!
Mr. Dennit: Just because you say that doesn't mean you get to say whatever you want to me!
Ricky: Yes, it does!
Mr. Dennit: No, it doesn't!
Ricky: It's in the Geneva Conventions, look it up!

[01LUGrad]

Jonathan Alter, please click here: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/youare

[Purple Haize]

Ok so if he wasn't a racist where did he get all of those white sheets for the original LU logo on the side of the mountain?? (Ok, a friend of mine who is black said that as a joke so I thought it appropriate for this forum!)

[whmatthews]

A spokesman for Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Co., who licenses the characters in the United States, said that the bag was just a magic bag. "The fact that he carries a magic bag doesn't make him a homosexual. It's a children's show, folks. To think we would be putting sexual innuendo in a children's show is kind of outlandish", he added.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinky_Wink ... troversies

Yeah right Itsy Bitsy, how about this: Disney.