When Jerry Falwell said some of this stuff in the 80s, he was an ass****

Now it’s a TEDTalk!

With liberal urban sophisticate idiots giggling in the audience, of course. They hated Falwell too. See, Falwell was a “hypocrite” (!?) Yeah, I know. Sad, isn’t it?

PS: I rewatched The People vs. Larry Flynt last night and was amused by the last “card,” which informs us that “Charles Keating was part of the Savings & Loan scandal that cost American taxpayers $2-billion“! Wow. That’s like the Koch Brothers and their big $2-million contributions to Republicans. And/or Dr. Evil…

Too bad the film was made too early to include one of the most fascinating aspects of story: the friendship that Flynt and Falwell developed after the trial and which lasted up until Falwell’s death:

In the years that followed and up until his death, he’d come to see me every time he was in California. We’d have interesting philosophical conversations. We’d exchange personal Christmas cards. He’d show me pictures of his grandchildren. I was with him in Florida once when he complained about his health and his weight, so I suggested that he go on a diet that had worked for me. I faxed a copy to his wife when I got back home.

The truth is, the reverend and I had a lot in common. He was from Virginia, and I was from Kentucky. His father had been a bootlegger, and I had been one too in my 20s before I went into the Navy. (…)

I’ll never admire him for his views or his opinions. To this day, I’m not sure if his television embrace was meant to mend fences, to show himself to the public as a generous and forgiving preacher or merely to make me uneasy, but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.

PS: Jerry Falwelll didn’t write that “Tinky Winky” article; one of his staffers did, and it didn’t carry Falwell’s byline. And typically, gays had already embraced Tinky Winky as one of their own, as they do half of what they see, even if it has nothing to do with gay-ness.

PPS: hey, check it out, Canadians!!

In a unanimous decision — written by, of all people, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist — the court reasoned that if it supported Falwell’s lower-court victory, no one would ever have to prove something was false and libelous to win a judgment. All anyone would have to prove is that “he upset me” or “she made me feel bad.” The lawsuits would be endless, and that would be the end of free speech.