I'll take a rain check if Jerry Falwell's yondering in the bleachers. Even so, in the spirit of faith-based-initiative skepticism, I'll share an email I got following Jerry's untimely, or timely passing, depending upon your point of view.
I quote this gem, risking banishment from Eden's Newly Fertilized Victory Garden for myself and feisty curmudgeon, Dr. Henry Messer, who with unhypocritical ballsyness sent the "bon voyage" to me and Triangle Foundation cohorts. (I like to cohort occasionally, but who in hell doesn't?)
"Speak only good of the dead. GOOD! He's dead," scalpeled Dr. Henry, who knows a thing or two about amputating evangelical rigor mortus. To which I add a hearty Amen! Selah! Mazel tov! And, for good measure, pressed down and running over, this mortuary advice from an all-time Great Undertaker, "Let the dead bury their dead." (Especially when they're brain dead.)
Yet, in spirit of pretense at charitable mourning – an arrhythmic mourning, fibrillated with "it couldn't happen to a nicer guy" – I offer a funereal bouquet of verbal pruning said on behalf of the Moral Majority Leader, who unfortunately wasn't allowed to broker his allotted six-score-and-ten 'til JC's Second Coming snatched him and his crusading cronies heavenward to look angelic, sing chorus after chorus, eternity after eternity . . . "We are trampling out the vintage where the [sour] grapes of wrath are stored . . . ."
Sr. Serena Scatterpin, Renegade Sisters of Mary: "I can suffer non-Recovering Catholic gladly – well, somewhat – if they seem sincere and have good dental work. But having so often worn my DKNY wimple fashionably correct with priests, bishops, archbishops, who knew how to 'gown it up,' (expressing their incense-and-lace fem side) I found Jerry Falwell, sad to say, rather lackluster in his choice of clerical garb. And too-contentedly plump for a preacher.
"For me it's the age-old question. Would you buy a used church bus from this guy? I'm sure as head honcho at Liberty U he never once watched Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Or, for that matter went to an interfaith Weight Watchers hoe down. Pity. Gays may like to sin (and honey, what red-blooded Tinky Winky doesn't?) but they do know how to gussy it up – or down – when coming together for good times and low-cal fellowship."
"The Moral Majority has been THE saving grace of America," says Dr. Lazarus A. Shandeh, editor of Family Values War Whoop & Big Broadcast Monthly. "Under God's guidance and Rev. Falwell's Last Days warnings we've come to see the light at the end of the pre-millennial 9/11 terrorist tunnel.
"Yes, feminists, lesbians, gays, and believers of all competing faiths [especially Mormons] are our misfortune. [You know: unsaved, not baptized by total dunking, not attending church three times weekly, not tipping Jesus 20 percent before taxes, not planning to vote for Newt in '08.]
"Falwell's passing due to acute heart problems – contrary to what Humanist/Liberals say [he actually did have a heart with four working valves and he never bypassed a day without telling others to repent and stop diddling their life away] – is a loss to American churches, kitchens, kids, and probably future car pooling.
"Pray God it's a wake-up call for Jerry, Jr., who's unaccountably still single – to carry on the family dynasty and be fruitful and multiply. [And forget those unscriptural rumors about a fruity gay nephew]."
Lastly . . .
"When I think of the number of disagreeable people I know who have gone to a better world. I'm sure hell won't be so bad at all." — Mark Twain
– to contact Charles Alexander email [email protected]
