Falwell: Not Necessarily The Person That You Think

[JMHACLJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/16/2007 8:57:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
pfink at albanylaw.edu writes:

This  story shows that Falwell could be strategic and intelligent.   Good
thing the woman wasn't selling "teletubby" dolls or trying to assert  her
constitutional right to control her own body.  What is the point  of this
story, to show that he used guile and dishonesty (make friends  with
someone so you can undermine her business) and that this is  something
you should praise?  It may not be polite to speak ill of the  dead, but
surely we should not allow false praise just because someone who  was
deeply hateful to others is no long alive.



Oh, please, don't confuse my message with an intention to promote false  
praise of someone who was deeply hateful to others.  
 
I was offering genuine praise of someone who was deeply  loving kind to a 
person that might have seemed natural to present an  instance for his powerful 
means of public coercion. 
 
The dialogue that will likely not occur in these circumstances may  
illuminate for those who wish for it to do so why there cannot be much hope for  
success in any dialogue between Evangelicals and Conservatives (on one side) and  
Secularists and Liberals on the other.  Histrionic characterizations such  as 
the one proffered about Falwell -- based on his principled disapproval of the  
judicial invention of the modern right to abortion and his stranger, but  
harmless, dislike for Tinkie or whichever Teletubby -- suggest that anyone who  
claims a basis in conscience for a view of opposition to legalized abortion can  
be expected to be recast as a hater.
 
And God knows, as does Imus, there is almost nothing so fearful as to be  
subject to characterization as a hater in the current construct.
 
Jim Henderson
Senior Counsel
ACLJ
 
 



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