One Scumbag Plus One Scumbag Equals Two Scumbags

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt decided to come out from wherever he came from to blast Jerry Falwell, Jr. and others for hypocrisy while pretending to be holier than thou. While Flynt, beloved by the male Left as a hero of "free speech," has a number of good points in his piece for Daily Beast, in the end he is a slimeball worse than Falwells Junior and Senior. Flynt made his fortune off trafficking women to make himself rich. He was a flesh peddler and a human rights abuser more extreme than Hugh Hefner. Flynt was worse than the Falwells since the latter didn't exploit women for profit.

Flynt's case regarded a parody rather than a cartoon of a popular liquor ad about Falwell's "first time," which clearly fell under First Amendment protections. There have been books written about this case. A book on the Flynt-Falwell case is the 1991 book, Jerry Falwell Vs. Larry Flynt by Rodney A. Smolla. It is available on Amazon and used bookstores.


I suppose the Daily Beast published this piece because they know Flynt is a scumbag, but you know the old saying: It takes one to know one.

Link:  Larry Flynt on Jerry Falwell, Jr.

An Overlooked Obituary and a Forgotten Scandal

I missed this obituary from 2 1/2 years ago, but I will note it here belatedly:   Rev. Marvin Gorman, a televangelist who was responsible for the downfall of Jimmy Swaggart in his prostitute scandal in the 1980s but went down in scandal himself, died at the age of 83 in 2017.  I was thinking about him a few minutes ago, as I have been doing a lot of reading and watching programs about the old PTL scandal.   Swaggart, of course, never fully recovered from his scandal.  It couldn't have happened to a better person, as it was Swaggart who vowed revenge on Jim Bakker when Bakker yanked Swaggart's program off the PTL Satellite Network because of his anti-Catholic rants.  Since the network went into many Catholic-dominated countries, Bakker was having none of that bullshit on his network.  Swaggart was vengeful, and it was he who was going to find out all the dirt he could on Bakker.   He didn't have to try all that hard, as we know, because people like PTL bigwig Richard Dortch and Jerry Falwell were all too willing to bring Bakker down themselves.

Anyway, Gorman had his own sex scandal to contend with, and thereafter he lived mostly in semi-obscurity:

Rev. Gorman was brought down in an epic feud that sullied the Pentecostal movement three decades ago. In 1986, Swaggart, a fellow Assembly of God televangelist based in Baton Rouge, accused him of adultery. Swaggart also helped blow the whistle on Jim Bakker, an Assembly of God televangelist in Charlotte, N.C., for an extramarital affair with a church secretary.

In response, Rev. Gorman circulated photographs of Swaggart and a prostitute at an Airline Highway motel in Metairie, leading to Swaggart's downfall, and he sued Swaggart for defamation. He won a $10 million award, although the parties later settled out of court at $1.85 million.

By this time all three men's ministries were in ruins. Rev. Gorman declared bankruptcy, Bakker went to prison and Swaggart's empire collapsed.

That scandal was and remains endlessly fascinating.  I had followed Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's program for many years prior.

Currently, I am finishing up Tammy Faye's memoir, which focused much attention on the scandal and its aftermath, Tammy:  Telling It My Way.  It was published in 1996, several years after her divorce from Bakker and eleven years before she died of lung cancer.  It is a very good book especially reminding the reader of the shenanigans that went on behind the scenes in the toppling of Bakker.  He trusted the wrong people time and time again.

It was a pattern with Bakker.  He helped get Pat Robertson's 700 Club off the ground, but Robertson wanted to appear in front of the camera instead of the Bakkers, so Bakker left.  He started up the Trinity Broadcasting Network, becoming an instant hit, but Paul and Jan Crouch wanted to appear in front of the camera, so Bakker left.  He got two major religious networks their starts, and then he went on and formed his own satellite network, one of the first if not the first of its kind.  It was a huge success and helped spur the movement for a Christian Disneyland near Fort Mill, South Carolina, called Heritage USA.  In fact,  Bakker at this point was suffering from the Edifice Complex with one building project after another, until it ultimately got out of hand.  As we know, Bakker once again put trust in the wrong people, who pounced when Bakker had taken a leave from the PTL program to take care of Tammy Faye following her bout with pneumonia and then a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic for dependency on medication.  He never came back to the network as Jerry Falwell pretty much stole the business away from him because Falwell wanted the satellite facilities which in the end he never got.  Falwell ran the entire enterprise into bankruptcy solely because he wanted the satellite network.  That was the real scandal, but it got buried because of all the turmoil surrounding Bakker, the Jessica Hahn payoff, and the mismanagement primarily orchestrated by Richard Dortch, head of PTL.  Three times was not the charm for Bakker, and he spent five years in prison.  Falwell emerged from the scandal with nary a scratch, as he had major connections in D.C. politics, unlike Bakker.

But, as we know, Bakker got out and just couldn't give up the idea of a Christian talk show, so, starting very small with a brand new wife, Lori Graham Bakker, he set up a small-scale television show near Branson, Missouri.  He has been doing this show for fifteen or more years.  However, he has gotten more and more paranoid in his old age, so now he has a program with lots and lots of end times nonsense with guests like the crackpot Lance Wallnau claiming Trump is doing God's work, while at the same time Bakker his hocking his food buckets of freeze dried slop (slop when water is added).

Tammy Faye, rest her soul, would spin in her grave if she knew what a crackpot her ex turned out to be.  Maybe the second part of this post's title is wrong, for as long as Jim Bakker remains in the limelight, the PTL scandal won't be forgotten.

When I Return

to Reno, I will have to obtain a copy of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I found this clip while surfing the net telling about the "honorable" Jerry Falwell's "helpfulness" to the Bakkers when he took over PTL following the Hahn scandal.





Falwell was totally despicable.

Instead of Looking

at the life and times of the late Jerry Falwell, it is more appropriate to have a round-up of his latest hits:

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

"I believe that global warming is a myth. And so, therefore, I have no conscience problems at all and I'm going to buy a Suburban next time."

"God doesn't listen to Jews."

"Tinky Winky is gay."

And there's more at the link.

The WSWS

once again writes an obituary in which the subject is better off dead than reading it.

Falwell doesn't fare well in this farewell article about Falwell.

And farewell to Falwell.

The Big Story

of today was the untimely death of evangelist and political boss Jerry Falwell, 73, who collapsed in his office this morning. He wasn't that old, but in any case, he had a pretty full life.

Falwell's biggest contribution, for good or bad, was his helping bring about machine politics to the so-called "evangelicals," thus creating what is now known as the "religious right," the "Christian right," or "Christofascism." His best years, before he decided to scale back his political activities, were in the 1980s, when he helped start the Moral Majority. By the end of the decade, he disbanded the group, but the movement lived on and thrived without him.

Falwell's ego got so big he couldn't take vulgar ribbing from publisher Larry Flynt, and he pursued his "slander" or "libel" suit all the way to the USSC. The USSC, then more sane than now, sided with Flynt and the First Amendment.

Falwell was also involved in the so-called "hostile takeover" of the PTL Network when the Bakkers (Jim and Tammy Faye) went down in scandal. The Bakkers didn't think much of him, charging that he wanted to get his mitts on the satellite network to use for his own purposes. In the end, Tammy Faye at least finally forgave him, but much of the rest of the United States has not forgiven him for helping to bring Elmer Gantryism to a point of respectability.

NYT

WP

The Lynchburg News & Advance has a slew of articles about the late evangelist.

Snips:

On Monday afternoon, Falwell had traveled to the top of Candlers Mountain with his son, Jerry Jr., to look a new gazebo that had been put in place near a huge "LU" monogram on the side of the mountain.

"He said he was feeling good," Falwell Jr. said. "He said he was feeling better than he'd felt in a while."

For the past couple of weeks, Falwell Sr. had complained about feeling tired.

On Tuesday morning, Falwell met Godwin for breakfast at the Bob Evans restaurant on Wards Road in Lynchburg.

"The breakfast lasted until about 10 a.m.," Godwin said. "Then he went to his office and I went to mine."

About 11:10 a.m., an LU employee called Godwin because Falwell was late for an appointment at the church.

"The secretary started looking for him because it was not like him to be late," Falwell Jr. said. "I told campus security to start looking for him. They went to his office and tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late. He died between 10 and 11:20 this morning."

He had been scheduled to preside in four days over the commencement of the first graduates of the Liberty University School of Law.

It's time to take a look at the life and times of Falwell.

I suppose I should mention Falwell's ties to Rev. Sun Myung Moon, but that's all I will do. I'll leave it to Robert Parry to write about Falwell's relationship to the corrupt cult leader when he does his obituary.

Oh, hell, here is a Parry article.

Better yet, here is a search page from the website.

In the 1960's, Falwell was a major supporter of civil rights:

Although most churches were segregated in Lynchburg then, Falwell was labeled a racist as he broadcast his views on the airways. In 1964 the church was the target of a civil rights demonstration.

The 1964 demonstration occurred when three teen-age members of the Congress on Racial Equality attempted to accompany a black teenager to Thomas Road Baptist Church.

In the late 1960s, Falwell changed his position, one he had been taught in college, and baptized his first black family. "I think I was wrong, I interpreted (the Bible) wrong and said so," he said.

He later turned his attention towards bashing gays, feminists, liberals, Teletubbies, and anybody else not politically fascistic.

If you are in a somber mood you can sign his guestbook.

Since the Clinton Impeachment

wasn't about sex or "perjury," or "obstruction of justice," but was actually a brazen power grab by the radical right to harass a legitimately elected president albeit of the other political party, it's little wonder religious fascists like Jerry Falwell looked the other way when it came to Newt's own indiscretions.