The Old-Time Hypocrisy Hour

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=195432

The Old-Time Hypocrisy Hour
John Nichols

snip//

So get ready for the "Old Fashioned Hypocrisy Hour."

Arizona Senator John McCain got things rolling with a statement released just minutes after the announcement that the man who for many years was the face of evangelical politics in America had died from an apparent heart attack at age 73.

"I join the students, faculty, and staff of Liberty University and Americans of all faiths in mourning the loss of Reverend Jerry Falwell," said McCain. "Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country."

Distinguished accomplishment? Would that be when Falwell regularly featured segregationists Lester Maddox and George Wallace on his Old Time Gospel Hour television program in the 1960s? When he condemned the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and referred to the civil rights movement as "the civil wrongs movement"? When he opposed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime in the 1980s? When he produced an infomercial in the 1990s accusing President Clinton of orchestrating murders of journalists and political critics, even though he would eventually admit that "I do not know the accuracy of the claims"? When he attacked Teletubbies character Tinky Winky as a gay recruitment tool? When he asserted that the Antichrist "must be, of necessity, a Jewish male"?

Falwell is a fascinating and significant figure in American political life, a man worthy of study and serious consideration. But McCain did not always see the preacher as a servant of his country.

Indeed, McCain's praise of the preacher today is a far cry from what the Senator said in 2000, when, in a much-heralded speech in Virginia, he described the fiery Falwell as "an agent of intolerance."

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[acmavm]

1. Tsk tsk tsk. Someone needs to give this guy the DU Holier-than-thou

speak no evil of the dead whine.