Falwell: Noticeable Media Double Standard

[meegbear]

FALWELL CONFIDENTIAL
Insider weekly newsletter to The Moral Majority Coalition and
The Liberty Alliance http://www.moralmajority.com <http://www.moralmajority.com/>

From: Jerry Falwell
Date: September 29, 2006

Noticeable Media Double Standard

Earlier this week, the so-called mainstream news media were up in arms over a statement I made last weekend at the Values Voters Summit. During my speech, I remarked that if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton were the Democrat presidential nominee in 2008, it would induce evangelical Christians to oppose her more than if the devil himself were running.

Oh boy, the liberals don’t like that kind of talk.

Of course this was a tongue-in-cheek statement, made to emphasize the fact that the Clintons serve as a motivating factor with conservative people of faith.

But Christians aren’t supposed to have senses of humor. Watch a network or cable TV show depicting a Christian and you’ll see a morose individual on the verge of breaking out in a fire and brimstone sermon at any moment.

Conservative Christians are continually defined by the media as humorless individuals who want to convert the world into mindless Christian zombies. So if someone like me utilizes irony or utilizes a whimsical phrase, it is taken as a threatening statement.

On the other hand, Hollywood personalities can make far more malicious statements and nobody questions it.

Take, for example, actor Alec Baldwin’s proclamation on Conan O’Brien’s late-night talk show a few years ago in which he called for the stoning of pro-life Congressman Henry Hyde.

On the broadcast, Mr. Baldwin stated: “I’m thinking to myself if we were in other countries, we would, all of us together, all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death! We would go to their homes, and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families.”

Funny stuff, huh?

But Baldwin got away with it because he later said he was joking. So the media largely excused him with a yawn.

Actor Ian McKellen, who plays Gandolf in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, was quoted on Salon.com as saying he routinely rips up Bibles in hotel rooms.

“Whenever I stay in a hotel I always check to see if they have a Gideon’s Bible, and if they do I tear out a page. I turn to Leviticus 18:22, which is directed against homosexuals; it is one of the Leviticus Laws. I don’t know if anyone ever even notices, but I really take exception to that section and I think by now I must have ripped out a few hundred pages. Who knows? There might be someone who has insomnia who stays awake all night who reads the Bible because they have nothing else to do and who might be especially vulnerable to what I really think is Leviticus’ pornography, so I just remove it.”

But Mr. McKellen was not condemned by the mainstream media because its members have largely adopted a stance that is defensive of homosexuality, even when it means the destruction of the Holy Bible.

Imagine if Billy Graham or Dr. James Dobson stated that they frequently go to Barnes and Noble and rip up homosexual publications. The outcry would be rightly thunderous. But there is no media objection to a prominent actor destroying Bibles.

I guess, like flag desecration, this is a free speech issue for liberals. But what about the free speech of those who print those Bibles? Apparently they don’t matter.

The double standard here is obvious, except to those in the mainstream media and their dutiful defenders.

We will continue to see the American mainstream media and Hollywood depicting evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics as objects of ridicule. There is no level playing field or even marginal attempt at honesty when it comes to the portrayal of conservative people of faith.

And so we return to my statement on Mrs. Clinton.

I certainly don’t believe her to be the equivalent of Satan. I simply believe that if she is the Democrat presidential candidate, her nomination will truly energize the evangelical community, just as the possible presidential candidacy of Newt Gingrich or Sen. Sam Brownback or Gov. Mike Huckabee would galvanize liberal voters.

Maybe I’ll call for the stoning of someone in my next speech and really get the media in an uproar. And then I’ll tell them I was just teasing. I’m sure they’ll let me off without objection.

[NC_Nurse]

1. Go Cheney yourself.

I can't wait til they find this guys emails to underagers...or will it be bodies in his back yard?
What a sick jerk he is.

[designforce]

4. Right On!

I hope the dirt comes pouring out. I think there will be a replay of the Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart revelations.

Come on MSM, do your job. Dig up the truth!

[Chipper Chat]

2. Memo to Mr. Falwell:

Dear Jerry:
Personally the remarks made by Alec Baldwin on Conan offend me as well as you. And I am a liberal democrat. Seriously Jerry, I dont know ANY democrat who shouted "yah rah, you go Alec" after hearing those off-the-wall comments - tongue-in-cheek or not. I do not like to hear personal slams against Pres. Bush either (even though he deserves them). So please dont paint us all with a broad brush. Oh, and lay off the gays would you? You've been beating that dead horse for 30 years now - give it a rest.

[C_U_L8R]

3. Just turn on a camera

and you'll see what vile manipulative ignorant and humorless
creatures these folks are. There is no "depiction" .. there is
no "double standard".. unless you take Faux's view that the
truth has two sides. No Jerrry.. when we see you on camera
in all your fatness and hate.. we are seeing YOU.
Get over it, you vain POS.

[gully]

5. I thought surely he was contrasting the Clinton vs. Foley coverage.

Huh?

[Kierkegaard]

6. Media double standard is right!

I guess JerryHole only happens to tune in when Alec Baldwin is on. Ever heard of Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, or Scarborough? STFU!

Oh, and "Conservative Christians are continually defined by the media as humorless individuals who want to convert the world into mindless Christian zombies" because Conservative Christians are humorless individuals who want to convert the world into mindless Christian zombies.

[Berry Cool]

7. I guess Mr. Falwell needs to start watching Studio 30 on the Sunset Strip

One of the most interesting things about it is that one of the performers is a Christian with a sense of humor. One who thinks that jokes about his uptight far-right followers are FUNNY.

[Imagevision]

8. Falwell, talk to Folie, he needs guidance badly!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Peace Patriot]

9. We've seen these S.O.B.s before--in the Christian jihadists of the 5th

century, who dragged the beloved philosopher Hypatia--head of the Alexandria Library, beloved by many Christians and non-Christians--through the streets of Alexandria, and skinned her alive, and burned all her mathematical works along with the entire Library; and in the inquisitions, witch-burnings, book-burnings, pogroms, "baptisms by the sword," and bloody crusades that followed, and on all sides of the Catholic/Protestant wars.

Unscrupulous men will ever use religion to wage war, rape, kill, pillage, burn, draw and quarter, skin alive, behead, plunder, oppress and dominate.

This history is in large part what the founding of the United States of America was all about--people seeking escape from a thousand years of religious wars in Europe and England--and it was a primary motivation of the writers of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, especially the First Amendment. No establishment of religion. Boy, does that phrase pack a wallop! They meant it with all their hearts. They had never seen any chicanery like that of religionists--nor any greater disturbers of the peace. If they anathematized anything--and they were loathe to speak in condemnatory terms--it was religious meddling in politics, for they well knew the history of their English/European ancestors. The U.S. was the product of the Enlightenment--Europe's great awakening from religious dictators and religious war.

The founders of our Republic were not irreligious. They were Deists, who detested religious factionalism and tyranny, and knew it to be the chief cause of civil disorder, mayhem, torture and war. They would be appalled at Bushism and Falwellism. And they would no doubt have taken arms against a Congress that passed the torture and rendition act of yesterday, although I think we have learned better methods of opposing tyranny over the last century than bloody conflict. All WE have to do is restore our right to vote--a difficult project, but one that can be accomplished civilly (I think by massive Absentee Ballot voting this fall, to protest the rigged electronic voting machines.) Ours is a different circumstance than theirs. But that is how strongly they felt about the horrors that religious fanaticism can unleash: hypocritical 'christian' bigots torturing and slaughtering innocent Muslims is one short step from hypocritical 'christian bigots' torturing and slaughtering anyone who disagrees with them.

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"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man." --Thomas Jefferson (inscribed around his statue in Washington DC)

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Who cares what actors say? They are citizens like everyone else, and have a right to their views. It is when PREACHERS anathematize politicians that we are in real danger. THEIR words carry the weight of centuries of religious warfare and untold horror. And it THEIR meddling, and THEIR meddling ALONE, that caused the freedom lovers of the American Revolution to issue their one and only fatwa, to all preachers, priests and clerics of all religions: STFU!