October 18, 2002
JABBA APOLOGIZES
John Chuckman
The Reverend Jerry Falwell has apologized
again. It is his third-favorite occupation.
His first, as we all know, is using national
television to promote the kind of intolerance and ignorance long
associated with sweltery, fly-blown corners of America's South. It's
a profitable business by the looks of Falwell's cascading jowls and
tailored, tent-size suits. He generally doesn't apologize for these
activities, whether it is his retailing of video-tapes
sensationalizing the pitiful suicide of a member of President
Clinton's staff, or his spending countless hours blubbering from the
pulpit against the lives of people who happen to be gay.
He once alerted the nation to dangerous
hidden tendencies he discovered in a British television show for
children, a harmless piece of fluff called Teletubbies.
Falwell gravely warned America that one of the tubbies was promoting
homosexuality.
Being a hate-entrepreneur or appealing to
the worst instincts of nitwits is not an unusual occupation in
America. There are many people who make handsome livings much the
way Falwell does, and they are not isolated in the dark corners of
American society. Some of them have considerable influence. Success
in accumulating money and making a name for yourself, however
achieved, counts far more than decency or intelligence in America.
Just ask the man who now occupies the White House.
Falwell's second-favorite occupation is
making idiotic statements blaming others for disasters. In this he
displays a common American trait, blaming others for what goes
wrong. But Falwell takes the practice to a lunatic level, the best
example being his statement, just days after 9/11, that America's
liberal and gay citizens were responsible for God's allowing such
destruction.
His third occupation is apologizing. Going
way back to 1985, Falwell apologized to Jewish Americans for
regularly using the expression "Christian America." He said he
wouldn't use it in future, but nasty old habits are tough to break,
and, in fact, he did use it again.
In 1999, he again apologized to Jews for
what probably qualifies as his most bizarre and inexplicable
utterance, "Antichrist was probably alive and that he was in the
form of a male Jew." His apology expressed regret for having said
these disturbing words but did not disavow belief in them.
Odd that on a recent tour in the United
States, Mr. Netanyahu - Israel's answer to Richard Nixon with a
generous dash of John Gotti tossed in - was photographed consulting
with Mr. Falwell. There appears to be no shame to the alliances of
intolerant politicos. But, as I said, money and celebrity count for
immense influence in America, and it doesn't much matter what you
did to get them.
About a week after 9/11, Falwell apologized
for his having said, days before, that the nation's liberal and gay
citizens were somehow responsible for very angry men from the other
side of the planet high-jacking airliners and blowing up buildings
in America. He made his original claim on the television program of
another fundamentalist know-nothing, Pat Robertson, who readily
responded with "I totally concur." Perhaps Robertson used "concur"
rather than "agree" to emphasize the high tone of this scholarly
exchange.
Now, Falwell has apologized for remarks on
still another television show. Perhaps anxious to demonstrate his
leadership capacity for making tasteless, ignorant statements at a
time of international crisis, Falwell originally said he had read
enough to believe that the prophet Muhammad was "a terrorist," "a
violent man," and "a man of war."
One just has to wonder what it is that
Falwell read. Perhaps it was one of the "comic strips" put out by
some of his fellow American fundamentalists portraying Muslims as
dark, evil characters opposing the nation's Christian values and
Manifest Destiny. Precisely such material does circulate today in
America. It is difficult to imagine Falwell ever having read a
serious book, or at least having done so with any reasonable
understanding. After all, this is a man on guard against Tinky Winky
the teletubby.
I don't know whether anyone else has noticed
recently, but Falwell is looking more and more like Jabba the Hutt,
that gross outlaw slug from the Star Wars movies, although
his voice and manner remind one rather of the late, professional
cowboy-hick, Pat Butrum.
The growing resemblance strikes me as
somehow oddly fitting, a kind of In the Heat of the Night-version
of the Picture of Dorian Gray. Only here, the nasty figure
himself grows more repulsive and bloated every week. But I feel sure
that when the smarmy Falwell looks in a mirror, he knows just who to
blame.
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