May 22, 2008

Remembering Falwell

All the hubbub over the "Reverend" John Hagee has overshadowed the recent (May 15) one-year anniversary of "the discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia."

Take it away, Christopher Hitchens:
Cooper: Do you believe he believed what he spoke?

Hitchens: Of course not. He woke up every morning pinching his chubby little flanks and thinking, 'I've got away with it again.'

Cooper: 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, if he read the Bible at all, and I would doubt he could actually read any long book.
Chaucerian frauds (YouTube, 5:21).
@

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:54 AM, May 23, 2008

    I still think Mencken has more panache than that drink-soaked Trotskyite popinjay.

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  2. illusory tenant7:51 AM, May 23, 2008

    No argument here. Thanks for that link, which also contains HST's farewell to Tricky Dick:

    "Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning."

    A great line, among many.

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  3. Anonymous11:52 AM, May 23, 2008

    I think the key to properly and thoroughly savaging an evil nemesis is to genuinely understand them, almost to the point of sympathizing with them.

    The "rhythm logic" section in F&L '72, where Thompson enters the mind of a football fanatic to deconstruct Nixon's selling out his own party was a masterful bit of understated parody.

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