EGAD

"He was, of course, a monster"

And in other news, Jerry Falwell has shuffled off the mortal coil. Richard Perlstein got right to the point: "He was, of course, a monster."

Benen has some vague qualms about condemning the recently dead, and so is content to let Falwell's career speak for itself.

And while Falwell's in for a real shock if the afterlife is anything like the Christian heaven he claimed to believe in, Tristero has the right idea:

The amount of misery he and his colleagues caused is uncalculable: rolling back the rights of women; blaming perfectly innocent Americans for 9/11 simply because he didn't personally approve of who they happened to fuck; fleecing the lower middle class to subsidize his lust for power and his propagation of ignorance; and so much more.

But I can't celebrate his death either because I know there are other christianists out there, just as bad as Falwell if not worse. His death is not that important in a world where the president of the United States himself is so extreme that he actually curries favor with lunatics like James Dobson.

In other words. the hard struggles needed to reverse the gains christianists have made against the better parts of the United States' government and culture lies ahead of us. There is far too much to do to waste time on Falwell one way or the other.