Jerry Falwell, RIP (P stands for Pain)

So Jerry Falwell, obese ass-clown extraordinaire, kicked the bucket yesterday.

Though I usually refrain from disrespecting the dead, with Jerry it’s pretty near irresistible. After all, he did it first.

Like when he said AIDS victims had received retribution from a just God.

And when he said that the poor souls who perished in the terror and fire of the 9/11 attacks had died because gays and lesbians and abortionists had inspired that attack.

I’m racking my brain for something positive to say about the man, and coming up blank. It’s very possible that he was a good father and husband. And for all I know, an all around great fellow. But I didn’t see that.

All I ever saw was someone trying, whole-heartedly, to take the three most divisive issues going --- sex, religion and politics --- and combine them into an electoral weapon. Then use that weapon to bully the rest of America into living our lives according to his particular sect’s interpretation of morality.

To me that’s just an asshole.

Death comes to us all, so I can’t be particularly happy to hear that it came to him. I’m just disappointed that it was as swift and painless when it did.

If there were truly any justice on this earth, Jerry Falwell would have slowly and painfully wasted away from opportunistic infections. Or jumped in terror from the 100th story of a burning skyscraper.

Not being a believer of any specific set of religious fairy-tales, I can't even console myself with the idea that he's roasting in hell right now. I just hope that at some point, as his heartbeat faded, he truly did watch his life pass before his eyes.

And that what he saw disgusted him as profoundly as it does me.