In a message dated 5/16/2007 8:57:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
This story shows that Falwell could be strategic and intelligent. Good thing the woman wasn't selling "teletubby" dolls or trying to assert her constitutional right to control her own body. What is the point of this story, to show that he used guile and dishonesty (make friends with someone so you can undermine her business) and that this is something you should praise? It may not be polite to speak ill of the dead, but surely we should not allow false praise just because someone who was deeply hateful to others is no long alive. Oh, please, don't confuse my message with an intention to promote false praise of someone who was deeply hateful to others. I was offering genuine praise of someone who was deeply loving kind to a person that might have seemed natural to present an instance for his powerful means of public coercion. The dialogue that will likely not occur in these circumstances may illuminate for those who wish for it to do so why there cannot be much hope for success in any dialogue between Evangelicals and Conservatives (on one side) and Secularists and Liberals on the other. Histrionic characterizations such as the one proffered about Falwell -- based on his principled disapproval of the judicial invention of the modern right to abortion and his stranger, but harmless, dislike for Tinkie or whichever Teletubby -- suggest that anyone who claims a basis in conscience for a view of opposition to legalized abortion can be expected to be recast as a hater. And God knows, as does Imus, there is almost nothing so fearful as to be subject to characterization as a hater in the current construct. Jim Henderson Senior Counsel ACLJ ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
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