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BEST of HA: Falwell That Ends Well (or An Ode To The Mortal Majority)

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[In a fit of nostalgia (and laziness), I’m marking my remaining days here on HA by posting links to some of my favorite and most influential posts. If you have favorites you’d like to see, please let me know.]

05/16/2007: Falwell That Ends Well (or An Ode To The Mortal Majority)

Reverend Falwell, fond farewell:
Your soul has fled its mortal shell
And flown across the great divide
To savor at your Savior’s side.
Or so you think… um… so you thought,
Well, so, at least, your Bible taught,
While unbelievers who deny
Eternal afterlife, like I,
Think when you’re dead, well, you just die.

But if, when I give up the fight,
I’m strangely drawn into the light?
And there your reverent form I see?
Don’t laugh sir, that the joke’s on me,
For since I’ve never claimed nor known
Your Savior Jesus as my own,
If you should meet this faithless Jew
In Heaven or in Hell’s review,
Well, either way… the joke’s on you.

Say what you will about my punditry, but I’d wager that there isn’t another political blogger in the nation, left or right, who is more skilled at writing rhyming verse. And yet, in my six years of blogging, this is the only vaguely political poem I’ve written. Huh.

Anyway, if you enjoyed this little bit of verse, be sure to check out my epics: “How the Kvetch Stole Chanukah” and “The Little Black Cat’s Big Catch.”

Falwell That Ends Well
(An Ode To The Mortal Majority)

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Reverend Falwell, fond farewell:
Your soul has fled its mortal shell
And flown across the great divide
To savor at your Savior’s side.
Or so you think… um… so you thought,
Well, so, at least, your Bible taught,
While unbelievers who deny
Eternal afterlife, like I,
Think when you’re dead, well, you just die.

But if, when I give up the fight,
I’m strangely drawn into the light?
And there your reverent form I see?
Don’t laugh sir, that the joke’s on me,
For since I’ve never claimed nor known
Your Savior Jesus as my own,
If you should meet this faithless Jew
In Heaven or in Hell’s review,
Well, either way… the joke’s on you.

Praying for Rev. Falwell

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As the Rev. Jerry Falwell lies in critical condition, hooked up to a ventilator in a Lynchburg, VA hospital, let me be the first to urge doctors to take all extraordinary measures to keep him alive, in accordance with the wishes of Falwell, his family, and his God.

Feeding tubes, IVs, ventilators, repeated and prolonged defibrillation… anything to keep Falwell from shuffling off this mortal coil. And if his body ultimately fails, I hope they keep his brain alive in a jar of nutrient-rich fluid. It is God’s will.

An Open Letter to Journalism from the U.S. Fucking Constitution

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The US Fucking ConstitutionDear Journalism,

You have one job: defend democracy. And you fucking suck at it.

Now, I know you like to think your job is simply to report the facts and that you have some sort of sacred obligation to remain “neutral” and “objective” and “fair and balanced,” and if this unbiased brand of nonpartisan journalism unfortunately results in the election of “America’s Hitler” (Trump’s running mate’s words, not mine), well, first draft of history and all that.

Oh, grow the fuck up.

The facts are, you made this rapey orange monster, and now it’s your job to unmake him, and if that means putting your calloused thumbs on the scale in opposition to, let’s be honest, a literal fucking fascist, then fuck your journalistic ethics and lean into it. Ours is a two-party system currently consisting of a democratic party and an undemocratic party, and if you’re not wielding all your power and privilege toward preserving our democratic institutions and norms, then you aren’t doing your fucking job.

I mean, why the fuck do you think the Founders put freedom of the press right up top in my First Amendment? Because they enjoyed the whimsical musings of Silence Fucking Dogood? Fuck no. It was because when you spend four sweltering months at a yellow fever lockdown party like the Constitutional Convention, endlessly debating Enlightenment ideals like how many fifths human a black person is, you really get to know your fellow “patriots.” And so the slave-owning hypocritical assholes who wrote me sure as fuck knew that the fragile democracy they just crafted had zero chance of surviving their own elitist ambitions let alone those of the slave-owning hypocritical assholes across the aisle, without a free fucking press to keep everybody the fuck in line.

And by “free press” I mean free to write whatever the fuck it likes no matter how viciously partisan or slanderous. As Alexander Hamilton famously rapped about Thomas Jefferson, “I’ll use the press, I’ll write under a pseudonym, you’ll see what I can do to him,” and holy fuck did he ever. Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison—hiding underneath those stately powdered wigs were motherfucking gangsters who’d sooner fuck you up the ass with a rolled up broadsheet then give you the time of day. (Fun fact: also hiding underneath those powdered wigs were unsightly patches of syphilitic alopecia, because nearly everybody had syphilis back then as if you couldn’t tell from their absolutely deranged implementation of an Electoral Fucking College. But I digress.)

The point is: the Founders couldn’t have imagined a democracy guided by objective and nonpartisan journalism any more than they could have imagined one in which the 585,000 residents of fucking Wyoming would each have 67 times more representation in the U.S. Senate than 39 million Californians. (Thanks again, syphilis!) No, the Founders’ intent was the journalism they practiced: an unapologetically partisan press beating the crap out of each other in the court of public opinion. In the American system, the only way you get “fair and balanced” is by balancing the other fuckers out! That’s how our democracy was designed to work. But when one side unilaterally disarms—when, for example, the New York Times curls up all Vichy France-like while Fox News gleefully goes full Goebbels—democracy doesn’t stand a goddamn chance.

And BTW, neither does journalism.

What? You think once orange Putin seizes the dictatorial powers the Supreme Court just promised him that somehow I’m coming to your defense? Sam Alito already wipes his bony white ass with me, so put one or two more Federalist Society Elders on the bench and New York Times v. Sullivan? Dead! New York Times v. United States? Dead! Hustler Magazine v. Falwell? Dead! I mean, wake the fuck up. Without a functional democracy to back me up, my First Amendment isn’t worth the brittle old parchment it’s scribbled on, so best of luck clinging to your precious journalistic ethics while stripped naked at Gitmo as Elon sues into bankruptcy one news outlet after another for every imagined slight.

Look, I’m not asking you to lie or anything. (Though to be clear, I’m not asking you not to.) I’m just saying that if all that stands between the survival of the world’s oldest democracy and the imposition of white nationalist authoritarian rule is a little good old fashioned partisan muckraking, then, like it or not, journalism, it’s your fucking job to rake some muck in defense of the candidate who doesn’t promise to dismantle the Constitution. Then, if we still have a democracy come January 6 (normally I’d say November 5, but, you know), by all means feel free to morally cleanse yourself in a paroxysm of this pretentious both-sidesism you call “journalistic ethics.”

And if democracy doesn’t survive this election? Well… given Trump’s open admiration of Putin and his tactics, I’d be awfully careful when standing near any open windows.

So get to it, journalism, before it’s too late. As Aaron Burr ominously asked of Hamilton, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time? Write day and night like you’re running out of time?” Why? Because he was running the fuck out of time!

And so are you, journalism. So are you.

Sincerely,

The U.S. Fucking Constitution

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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The Late Show: The Jerry Falwell Jr. scandal is giving pool boys a bad name.

Samantha Bee: The Republican party’s fall look—Fringe!

Biden—Harris 2020:

Trevor: What is QAnon?

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s best Christian: Fake Christian of the week—Jerry Falwell, Jr.

Bill Maher: American carnage

The Dotard Трамп and Other Grifters, Liars, and Cheaters:

MoveOn: Thousands rally to save the Post Office.

Jordan Klepper: What happened to the Federal Election Commission?

Racism in America:

Brave New Films: Poll worker emergency—Young people needed • Election 2020.

The Daily Show: America’s got suppression.

ТрампPlague:

Samantha Bee: What it means to be progressive with Pramila Jayapal.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Ari Melber: Bill Nye The Science Guy: “We need sweeping changes”.

Seth Meyers: Experiencing the effect of climate change in virtual Reality.

Vox: What the US gets wrong about minimum wage.

Now This: Newark’s water crisis has residents speaking out.

Francesca Fiorentini: If the economy is great, why aren’t we?

Jim Jefferies: Addiction.

The New Yorker: Why Stacey Abrams is leading the fight against voter suppression.

Seth Meyers: Kathy Griffin gave a speech about the First Amendment at the University of Oxford

Wired: Bill Nye explains the science behind solar sails.

Wendover: How to stop an epidemic.

The Dotard Трамп And His Fellow Racists and Rapists:

Comedy Cellar: Is it OK to be happy about Jeffrey Epstein’s death?

Trevor: Jeffrey Epstein’s death & America’s prison problem.

Vox: Why Route 66 became America’s most famous road.

Full Frontal: Investigating the case of Jerry Falwell, Jr., the pool boy, Michael Cohen, and Tom Arnold.

The Late Show: Exclusive footage of North Korea’s latest missile test

Seth Meyers: Jake Tapper on debates and Rep. Steve King’s “crazy remarks” on rape and incest.

Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship.

Rachel Maddow: Mitch McConnell at nexus of increased Russian leverage on U.S..

Twenty-Twenty Vision:

Slate: The Atlantic slave trade in two minutes.

Ali Velshi: 400 years from slaves arriving on Virginia.

Full Frontal: BBQ and reproductive justice.

Now This: FAUX News hypocrisy on white nationalist terrorists vs Muslim terrorists exposed.

Robert Reich: Is America becoming a third world country?

Bill Maher: New Rule—Armed and lonely.

Trevor: Tucker Carlson takes a sudden vacation following his hot take on white supremacy.

Seth Meyers: George Takei was sent to a Japanese-American internment camp at age five.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship

Drunk History: The history of the birth control pill .

Daily Show: A message to the Arctic from the people of Africa

Samantha Bee: NRA’s unfriendly fire.

Bill Maher: Michael Lewis on why government is good

The Dotard Трамп and His Flock of Felons:

Real Engineering: The challenge of building a self-driving car

Jim Jefferies: Helping kids in foster care with Ty Burrell.

Stephen: The VEEP/Colbert crossover episode.

Wired: How scientists are preparing earth for an incoming asteroid.

The New Yorker: Why noise pollution is more dangerous than we think.

Desi Lydic: Can we pass the equal rights amendment already?

Mental Floss: The Declaration of Independence and other amazing yard sale finds.

Twenty-twenty Vision:

Roy Wood, Jr.: Why aren’t people more worried about climate change?

The Late Show: Russian trolls are fueling the anti-vaxxer movement

The New York Times: Facebook is “too big”. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes tells us why:

Desi Lydic: Uber and Lyft vs. old-school taxis.

Jordan Klepper: The inside story of a pro wrestling league for war vets.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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BuzzFeed: Americans and Russians swap snacks.

Jonathan Mann: Medicare for allllll:

Young Turks: Tucker Carlson does incel porn.

The Dotard Трамп and His Band of Mobsters:

Vox: Why fixing the US bail system is tricky.

Nova: 2018 in review—the biggest science stories of the year.

Robert Reich: Why we must get Big Money out of politics.

Wired: How photography is affecting our brains.

The 116th Congress:

Pitchfork Economics: Whatever happened to the middle class?

The Atlantic: The world’s happiest animal.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Happy blogiversary to me!

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It was nine years ago today that I relaunched HorsesAss.org as an “almost daily blog on Washington State politics and the press.” You can read my very first post here. It is a touch fascinating to look back on how I managed to preserve the original vision of HA without at all anticipating how it would ultimately take over my life.

Anyway, in celebration of this milestone (and prodded Darryl) here is a list of some of my nine favorite and/or most influential posts, in chronological order. Thank you all for the past nine years, especially to all my co-bloggers who have carried on the HA tradition in my absence. And enjoy.

Stick a Foulkes in it, this case is done! (02/23/2005)
I’ve always been particularly proud of my legal analysis. In this early post, I explained exactly why Dino Rossi would lose his election contest, months before the court ultimately ruled.

FEMA director Mike Brown, a “total fucking disaster” (09/02/2005)
You know that Arabian horse story that hastened the demise of incompetent FEMA director Mike “Heckuva Job” Brown? This is the post that started it all, and first brought HA to a national audience.

Raging Bullshitter: the sad twisted tale of the Irons family feud (10/20/2005)
The day before this post hit, explaining why his own mother wouldn’t vote for him, King County Council member David Irons Jr. had a small lead in the polls in his bid to unseat Executive Ron Sims. After the media storm I generated, Irons ended up losing by 17 points.

Luke Esser fucks pigs (10/17/2006)
It is a sad irony that one of my funniest and most outrageous posts was written in defense Rodney Fucking Tom.

HA EXCLUSIVE: Seattle Times election day redesign revealed! (10/23/2006)
A rare display of my extraordinary Photoshop skills.

Falwell That Ends Well (An Ode To The Mortal Majority) (05/16/2007)
For a change of pace, some poetry!

Goldy’s Adventures in Muniland (04/25/2008)
In which I masquerade as David Postman and accept his Municipal League award.

Young woman quit DNR after being sexually harassed by Commissioner Sutherland (07/15/2008)
And election-changing bit of muckraking that all the other papers had, but refused to run with. Until after I did.

A layman’s refutation of Rob McKenna’s bullshit lawsuit (03/29/2010)
More than two years before the US Supreme Court surprised pundits by upholding Obamacare on Congress’s taxing power, I explained why the court would uphold Obamacare based on Congress’s taxing power.

Ann Coulter, accomplice to murder

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Sure, the guy is nuts, but this is what inevitably comes from violent, eliminationist rhetoric:

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Jim D. Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he described his feelings and why he committed the shooting, Owen said.

Adkisson said he was frustrated about not being able to obtain a job and how much he hated the liberal movement, Owen said.

Adkisson hated liberals… and so he shot up a Unitarian church. During a children’s play.

Committing suicide by going on a shooting rampage in a Unitarian church is like shooting fish in a barrel and expecting the fish to shoot back. The Unitarians I’ve known are about the most peaceful and harmless folks I’ve ever met; indeed, the only church less likely for Adkisson to find armed resistance would have been a Friends meeting house. (And even then, only maybe.)

So of course this guy was crazy. Sane people don’t go on shooting rampages.

But hatred like his doesn’t grow in a vacuum; it is nurtured, shaped and focused by hate-mongers like Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly, who cheer at the notion of killing a few liberals to keep us in line, or who have made careers out of vilifying the political opposition as terrorists or traitors or worse. No, neither Coulter nor O’Reilly nor any of their cohorts pulled the trigger, but they surely understood that their words might feed the insanity of someone who could. If these are the mullahs of the extremist right, then the liberal-hating homicidal Adkisson is a suicide bomber of their own creation.

Say what you want about the aggressive rhetoric of netroots activists like me, but we don’t advocate violence, because we understand that ultimately, the sole purpose of advocacy is to incite action.

UPDATE:
Sam Smith at Scholars and Rogues weighs in:

Jim Adkisson was an unbalanced man, and perhaps it was only a matter of time before he snapped. But two questions to ponder: first, who created the conditions that hastened the snap? And second, when the train jumped the tracks, who created the bogeyman that the diseased brain latched onto as the cause of all the pain?

[Read more…]

Open thread

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Another in a series of The Best of Goldy, I reprint for your reading pleasure this Easter Sunday a bit of theological verse I wrote upon the death of Rev. Jerry Falwell: “Falwell That Ends Well (An Ode To The Mortal Majority).”

Reverend Falwell, fond farewell:
Your soul has fled its mortal shell
And flown across the great divide
To savor at your Savior’s side.
Or so you think… um… so you thought,
Well, so, at least, your Bible taught,
While unbelievers who deny
Eternal afterlife, like I,
Think when you’re dead, well, you just die.

But if, when I give up the fight,
I’m strangely drawn into the light?
And there your reverent form I see?
Don’t laugh sir, that the joke’s on me,
For since I’ve never claimed nor known
Your Savior Jesus as my own,
If you should meet this faithless Jew
In Heaven or in Hell’s review,
Well, either way… the joke’s on you.

This Week in Bullshit

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Attacking kids edition.

*It’s sad whenever anybody dies. But holy shit, what kind of a lie was Jerry Falwell’s compatriot living? I can’t decide if on top of being tragic, it’s funny or creepy.

* But I do know that smearing a 12 year old boy’s family, is definitely on the creepy side. So knock it off, crazies. And while I wouldn’t call Michelle Malkin a terrorist, it is certainly true that her tactics are probably more about putting the fear of speaking out to other people than it is about having a sane reasonable debate. The next time someone who was helped by a program thinks they might want to speak out, they’ll be a bit more reluctant because she might send her flying monkeys after them.

* But at least conservatives are still compassionate toward injured Iraq war vets. Oh.

* The media do like to de-bunk some people.

* And John Gibson can tell the color of your skin by how your murderous rampage ends.

Locally:

* Jane Hague has a funny way of taking responsibility. I think maybe she feels responsible for getting caught?

* Jesus will ungay Washington and America if only conservative crazies let Him.

Safe sex, fundie style

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Although investigators have ruled the death of Montgomery Alabama minister Gary Aldridge a case of “accidental mechanical asphyxia,” the faithful are convinced it was murder. Why? Well, the Liberty University graduate and former Jerry Falwell aide was found hogtied in his home. And wearing a wet suit… and a face mask, a head mask, diving gloves and slippers, and rubberized underwear. And, an entire second wet suit.

Yup, sounds like murder to me. You know, except the part about the two wet suits and various diving paraphernalia. Not to mention the dildo up his ass.

And if Montgomery’s fundie community wasn’t scandalized enough, just wait until they find out the dildo was wearing a condom. Now that’s a sin.

Embracing bicycles? What’s next?

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Joel Connelly:

But this week, council members allocated $8.1 million to study the “surface-transit option” in replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Surface transit is a pet idea of those who seem to be forming Seattle’s agenda these days and pushing for a gentrified, politically correct, largely childless, heavily taxed city, a place that embraces bicycles and exiles NBA basketball.

This is almost Falwell-esque:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

Jesus, we embrace bicycles? And stopped having kids? We have gone too far.

To the hyper-sensitive, sports-hating, condom-using, tax-and-spend, Capitol Hill enviro-fascists, Joel points his finger at you.

“The David Goldstein Show” tonight on Newsradio 710-KIRO

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Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: Are gas prices to low?
With gasoline prices once again hitting record highs it may seem like an odd time to argue for a hike in gasoline taxes, but argue the P-I editorial board did. And you know what? I agree. Sorta.

8PM: Have the lovely ladies of hate talk gone too far?
Hate talker Melanie Morgan got herself banned from the News Hour on PBS, after repeatedly dissing an Iraq War vet. Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter are outdoing each other in their efforts to reach new highs in punditry lows. David Ferguson, blogging as TRex at Firedloglake, joins me for the hour.

9PM: Jerry Falwell is dead. Al Gore and Fred Thompson live. Why?
A touching tribute to the dearly departed Rev. Falwell, followed by discussion of why the two presidential candidates generating the most buzz and excitement are the two not running.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

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