Falwell: Before the Millennium

...He would have us beheve- Sometimes, being associated w~th b~g-ume ts aware that what fundamentalists ad- they're just hke the chdd with h~s nose TV mire m htm ~s that he has made ~t in pressed up against the window Th~s ~s the assocmuon that FalweU the other America He ~s the man who Sometimes, as Falwell makes clear, when fundamentahsts t~re of their endless wars and then" forced exclusion, they really don't want to fight the estabhshment, they want to join ~t [] works at Ume and Ume again And on brings the world to fundamentahsts the countless occasions that he speaks He ~s the httle bit of secular they will at Harvard and Yale, to the T~mes and let creep into their hves the Post, and on the major networks, This doesn't mean that Falwell's peoby John Podho~tz needed to know about, especially with Holocausts of their own over there THE TALKIES G~ri was really a good introduction for First from the Israehs, and then from the llhterate masses, of those ~ssues the Palestmmns, Charlle receives bor- about the Middle East we all really ing, endless lectures on Senntm history From the Israehs she hears of the the Israehs committing all kinds of Holocaust, and never again, and we will do what we must to save our coun- In fact, The Little Drummer Gtrl was try, and those lousy Arabs From the so dehnously recewed because ~t Palestmmns she hears of all that suf- brflhantly captured the romantic amfering, and the camps, and the 1948 bivalence so many progresstve Westerners were feehng about the Middle East On the one hand, Israel was Eventually the Israehs succeed m page hke--you should excuse the Two years later the movie is before us, and It is a stiff, despite d~rector George Roy Hill's best efforts Hill may be Hollywood's best hack, so his faalure to make le Carr~'s plot come ahve on the screen ~s tesumony 39...

...It appeared m the wake of the Israeh war m Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatda massacres, when most of the clwhzed world allowed its moral sense to atrophy and joined the braying of those hoping for Israel's destruction--although m the West the war, and all those massacres, and all we hope was less for polmcal destrucuon want ~s a country where we can hang than spmtual destrucuon, a fervent our hat, and do we begrudge the a fact of life, and even something of a free country On the other, the PLO had somehow become a romantic lndesire that Israel be rended by the self- Israehs their country, of course we hating pressures that its fellow don't democracies underwent m the 1960s stttuuon, the httle guy batthng the kflhng the Palestmmn, covering powers-that-be, the underdog And flus named Charhe, whose resemblance to Charhe's body m bloqd, and m some was especially true after the PLO way "kdlmg" her soul--how exactly is fighters left Ben.ut with their trois benever clear, since blood can be washed tween their legs The Israehs succeedoff m a bathtub and the man kdled ed m destroying the PLO as a potent before her eyes is responsible for the pohtlcal/mdttary force, and that made it all the more romantic The Ltttle Mossad She Is conwnced that the dark, brooding stranger she calls despicable murder of a family with a Joseph who is courting her from afar httle boy at the opening of the novel, Drummer Girl was the epitaph on the is a PLO operative, and falls in love not to menUon all sorts of terrorist PLO tombstone They gave it their best with hun In fact, he is a Mossad agent acts Oh, that complex Middle East) shot A temble beauty was born named Gadl Becker, and by Everybody there is right, nobody is withholding sex from her he wins her wrong, and one man's terronst is completely another's freedom fighter We all know Joseph and his Mossad confreres, in- the drill cluding the spectacularly creepy Colo- Mr le CarrY, who is not exactly a nel Kurtz (as m Joseph Conrad's cor- Conrad, or even a John Buchan, mrupted ~mpermhst Mtstah Kurtz, he vents ch~iracters who he there on the dead), keep her awake for days, break shouting, blustering, and gesucula- he creates m the minds of his followers pie want to make tt m America just as the ~dea that he ~s the equal of h~s tmg wildly Falwell ~s "cool" with a he has, but simply that he ~s the emsoftness and humor rare m those forum m worldhness and sophtsuca- bodiment of fundamentahsm's unexcircles He exploits television m a uon Falwell never ceases to play up h~s pressed desire to be on the reside, not way few other preachers do He has own celebrity D'Souza calls htm a the outside The rehg~ous right's long used ~t as ~t ~s used by the mmnstream "shameless namedropper" who, to h~s exde &dn't just make them angry at the medm, so that he doesn't just get congregation, will boast of h~s close rest of America in the manner that V~slbfl~ty out of h~s TV appearances, friendship with Menachem Begin or D'Souza and some of today's popuhsts he gets the glamour and prestige of that he has the ear of the President...

...As a young pastor "there was something obsessive" about the way Falwell went about "Few of the other preachers were as hungry for anything but a defense of Falwell...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 about Israel and the PLO garnered an down her defenses, and offer her the expression--unleavened bread The unprecedented amount of medm atten- greatest "acting" job she has ever had plot is, to put it as mildly as an tion for what was basically a potboder She IS to convmce the PLO that she Is ulcerate's droner, lmplauslble~ But this of a spy novel In fact, The Ltttle on their side, while helping the Israehs was all to the good, m the eyes of ~ts Drummer Gwl is easily the least com- to move m on and capture the eluswe celebrators For The Little Drummer pelhng and most self-indulgent of le PLO leader Carr~s often engaging and moving studies of espionage...

...In the fullness of Ume, between the first edmon and the fn.st-run release, what was once considered a "hot book," a book that had Hollywood's finest btddmg on tt for months before pubhcat~on, can often have descended into a peculiar, dated trrelevancy The most starthng example of th~s was Ragttme, the most trumpeted novel of the 1970s Yet ~t was such a creature In the novel a radical Brmsh actress of ~ts time, with its queasy rachcal chic posturing, that when the movie came Vanessa Redgrave, Yaslr's own Umty out five years after its mmal pubhca- M~tford, is all to the point, suffers a non, yawns were barely stlfied across "false flag" recrmtment by the Israeh the country, and $32 mdhon went sailmg down the tubes But even more lnstructwe, and dehghtful, ts the journey of The L~ttle Drummer Gwl to the s c r e e n John le Carr~s vmtous, mddly anuScmmc, wildly pro-terrorist 1982 novel John Podhoretz ~s critic-at-large and Capual LOre edttor of the Washington T~mes...

...Now they're on.our s~de and they want to do away wath them Well, they're not going to do away w~th [] money Percy lost in good measure because of the defection of Jewish voters m Chicago The best news Sabato presents ~s that PACs have helped the national party organ~zatlons to become powerful forces for the first time The Repubhcan party has been the chief beneficmry The $215 mdhon it rinsed m 1982 (and much more m 1984) funded an elaborate program of polhng, training of candidates, computerized ~ssue files, data banks of voters and constituency characteristics, d~rect mailings, TV ads, and $20 mllhon m direct md to can&dates This has given Repubhcan senatorial candldates a deosive edge m close elections Of the 29 close races in 1980, 1982, and 1984, the Repubhcans won 21 and lost only 8, thus accounting FALWELL: BEFORE THE MILLENNIUM Dlnesh D'Souza/Regnery Gateway/S14 95 Malcolm T Gladwell ( ( I n 9 a rare and mexphcable moment" when Jerry Falwell was but a chdd, his father put his hand on his son's head and said" "This one will be himself That brashness made him s~ons...

...So it seems fmr to ask when posing his rehglous behefs on the rest my preacher" And when, m his early popular, made him king of his class, of America But I wonder If Falwell twenties after a wild and high-spirited youth, Falwell was born again, his mother "merely smiled to herself, as ff she had expected it all along " These were the portents of Falwell's youth, the signs he added up at the beginning of his ministry that made him sure, so very sure, that he was right with God Others have paused, agonized, unsure of God's purpose, before does, that "I have always been full of accepting a vocaUon But not Falwell He charged headlong into the mmlstry to his contemporaries, and says he's at with the same brash determlnaUon that was later to assure him that his followers were moral and m the majority As a boy he was the prankster, the Malcolm T Gladwell ts assistant managing editor of The American Spectator 38 brought to preaching It Is stud that In into a genuinely good read But in the his frantic soul-saving Falwell "seemed process he steers clear of the lmphcato need measurable indices of his suc- tions of Falwell's move into the cess ten more students this week, four political arena D'Souza doesn't seem people accepting Christ after a service, to want to acknowledge that the Falwell e t c " For Jerry Falwell it is "as impor- who once held to the fundamentalist tant to count new heads as ~t had been orthodoxy that Christians were not for his father to count income at the called upon to "wage wars against end of a workday" Falwell has a gen- bootleggers, liquor stores, gamblers, uine business sense It is he who is murderers, prostitutes, racketeers credited with starting "saturation or any other existing evil as such," and evangehsm" which means he didn't just now does precisely that with his preach on Sunday, or just have a radio political lobby group Moral Majority, ministry, or just have people witness- is no longer in the great tradition of mg door to door--he did everything, fundamentalist preachers from Dwight all at once, so that if he didn't get you Moody to Billy Sunday and Billy at home, he got you on TV, or in your Hargls D'Souza doesn't want to beheve car, or in a shopping mall Falwell that Falwelrs secular activities have brought the ministry into the twentieth tainted him and pushed him in any way century He crossed the line from from the traditional fundamentalist religious to secular and brought back pattern Wasn't Falwell's move into all kinds of new ideas So much so, in politics simply a natural outgrowth of fact, that when you look at Falwell and the old fundamentalism9 Isn't Falwell's his TV show, his mailing lists, and his constituency those whose beliefs have made them the political and social outthe end he isn't so much a preacher for casts of the last fifty years ~ And the Lord as he is a salesman How much has religion changed them " weren't they, D'Souza asks, those who were laughed out of the Scopes trial in Jerry Falwell~ Has it left any imprint 1925, and whose convictions for a on him at all~ When Falwell was young moral and upright America were and wild, he would skip Sunday school mocked and violated in the sixties and and scorn rehglon "as something seventles'~ The Bible says to turn the women did " Now, though, now that other cheek, but sometimes even for Falwell has accepted Christ, he insists the very Christian enough is enough that "Christ wasn't effeminate Christ D'Souza says that Falwell simply realwas a he-man " Could Falwell, the ized that getting the Chnstmn message high-school star once invited to a St across in the eighties required moving Louis Cardinals tryout, only accept a to a higher stage and regaining some God as manly as himself') Today he has respect for Christian behefs That was a "theology of sport", he calls his con- a change of style, but not of content gregatlon to be "champions for With the Moral Majority, the book tells Chnst," and at his Liberty Bapust Col- us, Falwell pursues the same evangehcal lege moral admonmons rank up there goals of putting morality back into with the construction of a new gym- everyday life and bringing America nasmm If Jerry is a jock, does his closer to fundamentahsm that underlie Jesus have to be one too~ In short, &d his ministry at Thomas Road Church Chnstmmty change Falwell or was the m Lynchburg This Is a beguiling thesis, especially because if so closely correlates with the youth to fit his own mascuhne d~men- Falwell of hberal legend--the man imsports hero, the hfe of the party He reverse true~ Did Falwell himself was reckless and danng because, in the change the effeminate rehgion of his end, he had complete confidence in Falwell says that "I have always hked what I do, whether it is sports or be- is so bent on bringing America closer ing a mlmster," whether he sees a dif- to the fundamentalists, then why has ference between the two, and ff he his primary achievement been to do exdoesn't, whether that means, In the actly the opposite9 Why has Falwelrs sum of all Falwell's contradictory parts, most significant contribution to his he Is more a creature of the secular froth been in making it more aware of world than the kingdom of God but when he brought it to do the Lord's work was it out of place'~ Certainly to those of us schooled in the stud~ed humdlty of the older churches--of a Cathohc priest, of an Anghcan curate--Falwell, his atutude, his chutzpah come as a shock Are the deeply rehglous to be so compeUUve, so driven ~ Should they gloat, as Falwell T h a t is a question Dlnesh D'Souza and more compauble with the outside world 9 It is Falwell who has led the fight In his own church, and later in fundamentahst churches throughout amhitlon'"~ Falwell compares himself doesn't answer in FalwelL Before the the South, for an end to segregation Mdlenmum This is a case of the right Now "he speaks of race almost in the dealing with one of ItS own, and despite vocabulary of civil rights leaders " the book's subtltle--"A Critical It is Falwell who, with his gentle wit, Biography" (which one assumes to be has mocked the strictness of his tronlc)--lt never pretends to be followers, urging each of them to the top because he works harder than anyone else...

...But It was bnlhantly timed, and tuning is everything...

...To souls" as he was, and it is that hunger that has made him what he is These are worldly vu'tues Falwell has his credit, D'Souza treats his subject with grace and thoroughness, and turns what could easily be shrill justification THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 "worry a httle less about the length of your son's h a i r " It is Falwell whose vigorous support of Israel has confronted much of fundamentalism's barely suppressed anU-Semmsm, and whose open admiration for Cathohc socml conservattsm has inaugurated a new ecumemsm in both churches The fact ~s that the pohtmal world has changed Falwell His worldhness does matter, ~t ~s at the very center of h~s message and appeal As with so many other modern evangelists, the television ministry ts the basts of h~s popularity Yet he alone g~ves ~t a secular twist H~s contemporaries on telev~smn are "hot" m the sense that TV performers, m the McLuhanesque parlance, are never meant to be m LITTLE DUMDUM GIRL I t usually takes between stx and e~ght months to produce a book from an author's manuscript, what w~th the e(htor's pen, the typesetter's hes, and the binder's delays It takes at least e~ghteen months, and usually much longer, for a movie based on such a book to htt the theaters, what with the screenwriter's compressions, the moneymen's anxmties, the star's drug habit, and the fights between producnon company and distributor...

...and their ilk who can afford to mamtmn permanent lobbying representation m [Washington] " One ~mportant group of PACs escapes Sabato's usually thorough coverage the pro-Israel orgamzat~ons like NaUonal PAC In 1984 $9 mllhon went through these groups, primarily to defeat Senators Charles Percy and Jesse Helms and other "enemies" of Israel Helms proved much more sucfor the GOP control of the Senate The bottom hne is that PACs are probably a force for the good By provldmg the "United Way" for cmzens to contribute money, they have enlarged the scope of popular support for the pohtical process By mandating detailed &sclosures, the PAC system has largely ehmmated the illegal under-thetable contribution The parties have successfully responded to the PACs by cessful than his opponent in raising treating them hke another set of interest groups to broker, and by strengthening their own party services PAC money accounts for only a small fraction of the money in pohtics--thelr total spending is less than the adverusmg budget of Procter and Gamble PACs have much less influence on legislation than do lobbies or the parues themselves Finally, they have helped tilt the pohttcal dmlogue in America to the right Ronald Reagan m 1983 stud he was "a httle amused that suddenly our opponents have outreach programs, you know that in developed a conscience about political action committees I don't remember them being that aroused when the only ones you knew about were on their s~de...