Jeff Cohen: Falwell and Me

[demobabe]

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Jeff Cohen

It was fitting to see so much gushing on TV news about Rev. Jerry Falwell in the hours after his death. He and TV news held the same things sacred: fame, soundbites, and uninformed fear-mongering.

At the beginning of his rise 25 years ago, it was mainstream media complicity and gullibility that helped build Falwell's Moral Majority and the myth of its clout. As documented in Tina Rosenberg's 1982 Washington Monthly piece, "How the Media Made the Moral Majority," Team Falwell repeatedly violated the Ninth Commandment by misleading journalists about their numbers and power.

Despite hundreds of outlandishly inaccurate, uninformed, and bigoted comments over the years (not just the three you may have heard last night), Falwell remained a respected fixture in TV news. The TV producer's friend - he didn't need to know much about a topic to say yes to the invitation.

In FAIR's exhaustive study of ABC Nightline's guest list during the mid-1980s, Falwell was one of the show's most frequent guests; he offered his expertise about homosexuality on one episode, and about AIDS on another. (Falwell saw AIDS as a holy punishment of gays, and once asked why people with AIDS were not quarantined like infected cattle.)

My only direct experiences with Falwell were fittingly with Falwell, the TV pundit. We did battle via TV studios, his natural habitat. As a paid pundit at MSNBC in 2002, I had colorful on-air debates with Falwell (described in my book, "Cable News Confidential").

When I debated Falwell in 2002 on whether to invade Iraq, he pointed his pudgy finger at Saddam Hussein as having been involved in the 9/11 attacks. Falwell was a Republican team player - blaming 9/11 on Saddam was now more important than blaming it on feminists, gays, and the ACLU, as he'd done on September 13.

During another MSNBC debate we had on the separation of church and state, Falwell was in fine form and in love with his own voice: "Much of public education today," he intoned, "is designed to create an atheistic society that totally repudiates our religious heritage. This is a nation under God!"

Near the end of the debate, I restated a point I'd opened with that Falwell had not answered: "Rev. Falwell, if we are a nation under God, it's interesting that the founders of our Constitution, our framers, didn't even put the word in the Constitution. That was by design."

"You haven't read it very clearly," Falwell responded. "Let me correct you on that. The Constitution is dated 1787 in the year - of - our - Lord."

He slowed down to enunciate each precious word, considering it a "gotcha" moment. Falwell and I were on a split screen; as he sternly pointed his finger at me, I shook my head, face in my hands, in disbelief...

More here: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1019

[no_hypocrisy]

1. This can't be emphasized enough: Falwell was a valuable asset to republican talking

points by virtue of his position as a christian minister. Falwell enjoyed the impression of godlike veracity due to his position. After all, a man of god would not go in front of the cameras and LIE. So if Falwell said that Saddam was behind 9-11, it must be true. If Falwell repeated anything that * said, no matter how ridiculous it sounded, it had to have been true. He gave credence to outright political lies in order to gain access to power and wealth. I can't help but wonder how far republicans from Ronald Reagan until right now would have benefitted from this public figure if he had not given them cover for their manipulations, lies, and suppression of democracy by his mantle of religiosity.

[Ian David]

2. Maybe he was Brittney Spears in a fat suit? n/t

[demobabe]

3. I agree

Falwell was a televangelist and not entirely unquestioned, but it is a difficult argument to fight against someone who tries to validate their argument by pointing to God. As if anything you say is "against God" or the work of the devil.

[demobabe]

4. kick

:kick: