Speaker 1: What stolen back my sling from Sophie. I'm Robert Evans
Speaker 1: hosted Behind the Bastards, and I have stolen back the
Speaker 1: bagel flinging sling that Sophie stole from me uh and
Speaker 1: will very soon use it in a way that is
Speaker 1: damaging to both property and people. Um. Also, this is
Speaker 1: a podcast where occasionally we talk about bad people, but
Speaker 1: more often than not these days, I just do increasingly
Speaker 1: reckless things because no one has stopped me. I have
Speaker 1: been canceled yet. Oh you you You are in Cansylvania,
Speaker 1: as we determined last episode, and tell us who your
Speaker 1: roommates are currently. Well, I'm living with Louis c K,
Speaker 1: which is, let me tell you, pretty uncomfortable. Yeah, Myles
Speaker 1: didn't love him as a roommate. He wasn't Canceledvania. No,
Speaker 1: not great, not great. Also bad cleaning, I'll give it,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll get to the cooks a pretty
Speaker 1: decent omelet, not a bad omelet cookery. You know everyone's
Speaker 1: got positive negative never cleans the toilet. I would expect that,
Speaker 1: and Louis c K can damage a toilet. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you, I believe it. You know who else you
Speaker 1: could damage a toilet. Jerry Fowell and Ronald Reagan. Those
Speaker 1: jellybeans did not come out smooth. I don't know why
Speaker 1: we're talking about poop, because you're an odd duck, and
Speaker 1: I followed you to the poop, to the poop. That's
Speaker 1: the true meaning of friendship. That's how you know it's real.
Speaker 1: That's how you know it's real. Speaking of real, this
Speaker 1: is a bad leading. Ronald Reagan today is such an
Speaker 1: icon among the religious right that it's easy to forget.
Speaker 1: He wasn't always viewed this way. You have to remember
Speaker 1: that back before his eight years in office, before his
Speaker 1: monstrous and unforgivable failure to respond to the AIDS epidemic,
Speaker 1: Reagan had a reputation for being a somewhat liberutine playboy
Speaker 1: movie star. He had tons of gay friends. He was
Speaker 1: plugged into the Hollywood set. Reagan had long been concerned pative,
Speaker 1: but he was not seen as a member of the
Speaker 1: religious right. Of course, some of that had to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that the religious right did not really
Speaker 1: exist when Reagan was in politics. Jimmy Carter, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, was and is a deeply devout evangelical Christian
Speaker 1: even today at age roughly one hundred and seventy. He
Speaker 1: spends most of his free time building houses for the poor.
Speaker 1: The fact that the Moral Majority and the bulk of
Speaker 1: American Evangelical Christians broke for Reagan in the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: election was a strange novel development on this subject. Doug
Speaker 1: Banwort writes, although Reagan was not the perfect conservative, he
Speaker 1: was better than Carter, who had not accomplished significant legislation
Speaker 1: or executive orders to appease the evangelical community. Bruce Bursumo
Speaker 1: wrote that the Moral Majority was pinning its hopes on
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan and the presidential election. The Moral Majority, Christian Voice,
Speaker 1: and other Christian political organizations hoped that they could have
Speaker 1: a real evangelical social conservative on which they could depend
Speaker 1: in the White House. Carter was not sufficient. So Carter's
Speaker 1: crying right now. Yeah, he's like, I was not so
Speaker 1: for Shure. Yeah, I mean, Jimmy Carter made the mistake
Speaker 1: of actually like like like like like reading about the
Speaker 1: stuff Jesus said, uh, and and we're interpreting it in
Speaker 1: a positive wye and using it as like, oh, I
Speaker 1: should probably take care of poor people in the disenfranchise
Speaker 1: exactly whereas Jerry Follwell read it and said, well, clearly
Speaker 1: black people are supposed to go to school with white kids.
Speaker 1: Hen Reagan was like, oh, I think mentally ill people
Speaker 1: have been having it too easy. Yeah. Yes, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: the only Republican to push for massive gun control. Uh,
Speaker 1: didn't get a distill does not get attacked for it
Speaker 1: because the purpose of it was disarmed black people. That's
Speaker 1: the story we'll tell at some point. Yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: California has a bands on open carrying. Actually, cool stuff,
Speaker 1: cool story. Ronald Reagan now one of the everybody's hero
Speaker 1: of course. Of course, one of the chief reasons Jerry
Speaker 1: Fallwall and the devout throngs he spoke for disliked Carter
Speaker 1: was his support for feminism. Back in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and early seventies, when the feminist movement had first launched,
Speaker 1: it had seen tepid support from conservative Christian circles. This
Speaker 1: started to change in the mid nineteen seventies, largely as
Speaker 1: a result of the feminist movement's decision to treat gay
Speaker 1: people like human beings and not diseased. Pariah's Yeah, real
Speaker 1: tactical misstep there. In November nineteen seventy seven, the National
Speaker 1: Women's Conference was held in Houston, Texas. Feminist activists declared
Speaker 1: an alliance with several gay rights groups and a meeting
Speaker 1: earlier in the year, feminist activists had noted that lesbians
Speaker 1: made up a significant portion of the movement. The lesbians
Speaker 1: sucking run ship. You want somebody to make a fucking
Speaker 1: Excel spreadsheet and show up on time, you get a lesbian. Yep,
Speaker 1: I'm just giving advice out here. Over people were trying
Speaker 1: to hire, seconding that advice. Yeah. Also, it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to pirate Microsoft Excel. I don't have anything else to add.
Speaker 1: It's just in Google Docs. They can use their sheets too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's not stealing something. No, it's not. You really
Speaker 1: want to be transgressive you have a lesbian woman's steel
Speaker 1: Microsoft Excel and then really fighting the power show it
Speaker 1: to Mr Paperclip. Okay, so yeah. The SOA, the National
Speaker 1: Women's Conference acknowledged that the oppression faced by gay people
Speaker 1: was very much rooted and many of the same things
Speaker 1: that caused the oppression of women in American society. Intersectionalism,
Speaker 1: you could call it. Morally, this was the right decision,
Speaker 1: but it led to a tremendous backlash against feminism by
Speaker 1: America's most intolerant Christians. Two years before the establishment of
Speaker 1: the Moral Majority, Jerry Fallwell said this about the gay
Speaker 1: rights movement. Though they claim to be another poorly treated minority,
Speaker 1: homosexuals are involved in open immorality as they practice perversion.
Speaker 1: They're not a minority any more than murderers, rapists, or
Speaker 1: they're centers are a minority since they cannot reproduce. They prostallite, prostallite, prostite.
Speaker 1: He's saying that they have to recruit people. And this
Speaker 1: is like so Jerry, like there's a conspiracy now, Like
Speaker 1: if you watch like Alex Jones show and they're reporting
Speaker 1: like the Drag Queen Story Hour, there's this like belief
Speaker 1: among them that it's like this this attempt by the
Speaker 1: LGBT community to recruit young Jerry Fallwell innvinced that conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: He's like the first really prominent voice saying that, like, well,
Speaker 1: because obviously being gay is in something natural. It's not
Speaker 1: something that like just a certain portion of the population
Speaker 1: is always going to be because that's just the way
Speaker 1: that human beings are, as well as every other species
Speaker 1: that reproduces sexually are um, Like he decides the only
Speaker 1: way that they can make new gay people is to
Speaker 1: convert children. Um and like that's obviously now, Like you
Speaker 1: could run into it at shipload today. It's like a
Speaker 1: huge conspiracy theory and we have Jerry Falbalt to thank
Speaker 1: for that. So that that's cool. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know where that comes from. It's like, do you think
Speaker 1: straights are out there teaching straight people how to straight? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It does kind of insinuate that, like being straight isn't
Speaker 1: natural either, and you just have to like capture kids
Speaker 1: with whatever. Right, the kids just come out completely without
Speaker 1: any identities, and then like whoever catches them first, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the sexuality they're going to get. Yeah, they're like
Speaker 1: they're like birds imprinting on the first thing they see
Speaker 1: out of the egg. So lucky. The first thing I
Speaker 1: saw when I came out was a penis and a vagina.
Speaker 1: That's how I became by right away. It was a
Speaker 1: weird hospital you were born in. I mean it was
Speaker 1: an all nude hospital, my request hospital. I requested that
Speaker 1: in the womb. I would love it if we just
Speaker 1: did a shot for shot remake of e Er, but
Speaker 1: everyone's naked and they never ever ever address it, not
Speaker 1: for one second. I would love it, not just because
Speaker 1: I want to see like clone. Well, so I was
Speaker 1: Annoya Wiley fan. Oh yeah he was hot, but I
Speaker 1: mean I kind of really wanted them to kiss all ways,
Speaker 1: but they never would. Sorry, that was a personal journey.
Speaker 1: It's I. I have some good news for you. There's
Speaker 1: about four hundred thousand pages of fan fiction where they do,
Speaker 1: in fact consummate that relationship. So I know what I'm
Speaker 1: doing after this podcast. I am excited for what deep
Speaker 1: fakes are going to do for fan fiction. Uh, romances
Speaker 1: like that's it's really going to be groundbreaking. I'm horny already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so is Reddit. Oh yeah, I should probably read the
Speaker 1: podcast that we're doing. I was thinking about George Clooney
Speaker 1: and Noah Wiley me too, Yeah, we all were so.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter was far from an outspoken gay rights advocate
Speaker 1: during his time in office, although he has since been
Speaker 1: very outspoken about that, but he did lend his vocal
Speaker 1: support to the feminist movement, including the nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: National Women's Conference, to Fallwell and his fellow evangelicals. This
Speaker 1: made Jimmy Carter a traitor to God's cause. They further
Speaker 1: hated Carter for his liberal policies and the value of
Speaker 1: social programs. Compounding this was the fact that the mid
Speaker 1: to late nineteen seventies was a time of deep economic
Speaker 1: stagnation and a high unemployment. And this recession had actually
Speaker 1: started at the tail end of Nixon's time and power,
Speaker 1: and it reached its deepest severity during Gerald Ford's presidency
Speaker 1: UH and continued through Carter's term in office. The actual
Speaker 1: causes of this stagflation, which is a term we all
Speaker 1: learned in high school, are complex and multifaceted, rooted in
Speaker 1: a combination of enormous government spending on the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: surging oil prices, and a series of union strikes. Things
Speaker 1: actually improved economically during Carter's term, but not quickly enough
Speaker 1: for Fallwell and his fellows on the religious right. Rather
Speaker 1: than see the recession is what it was, a complex
Speaker 1: disaster brought on by many different decisions, particularly those made
Speaker 1: by Richard Nixon, they decided the politic move would be
Speaker 1: to blame the economy on social programs. This tight end
Speaker 1: with a growing belief among the religious right that the
Speaker 1: federal government was incapable of handling social programs. They wanted churches,
Speaker 1: guided by powerful pastors like Jerry Fallwell to see to
Speaker 1: the poor and disenfranchised. Fall will express this wish, let
Speaker 1: us train see to the poor. Is such a hilariously
Speaker 1: privileged like TURNI phrase. It's like someone say to the poor, yeah, please,
Speaker 1: And this is this idea that like if the government's
Speaker 1: taking care of them, then they're basically slaves to the government,
Speaker 1: as opposed to it's like why would we care about them?
Speaker 1: That's gross government? Come on, please get in here, yes,
Speaker 1: please take care of the pause, shall you? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it's like like it is it is kind of
Speaker 1: rooted this idea that he had that like he should
Speaker 1: he and other pastors should own the poor, should like
Speaker 1: control them, like because they clearly believe that the government.
Speaker 1: Like that's one of the lines you're here on the right,
Speaker 1: is that like, well, if you have all these social programs,
Speaker 1: then basically, like all these people are indebted to the
Speaker 1: government and they're they're just going to vote for more
Speaker 1: social programs. But it's like if you're saying that you
Speaker 1: want churches to take care of it, and you're just
Speaker 1: saying you want those churches to people to be indebted
Speaker 1: to the church, of course. Yeah, it's cool, cool way
Speaker 1: for things to have work. Yeah. Jerry Fallwell was a
Speaker 1: committed anti communist, and he also saw the social safety
Speaker 1: net the Democrat at it increasingly invested in since the
Speaker 1: New Deal that's fundamentally dangerous. In nineteen six he preached
Speaker 1: that if God lifts his hand from America, it's all over.
Speaker 1: And if America loses her freedom, the free world is gone.
Speaker 1: America should bless the world with expensive healthcare and not
Speaker 1: being able to feed your family. Also, it's always like
Speaker 1: motherfucker's being like, oh, I know what everybody should be
Speaker 1: doing that. You're like, no one literally asked you ever,
Speaker 1: But no, this is with the moral This is the
Speaker 1: moral genda I have for the poors who I now own,
Speaker 1: which is so just so weird. And also there's a
Speaker 1: fundamental belief that poor people are somehow different from rich people.
Speaker 1: You know, that they're like of a lower stock and
Speaker 1: a different cast they'd be rich. Yeah, that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's like it comes it's such a deep seated thing
Speaker 1: that like it's beautiful poor masses. It's always like Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they're fucking dumb. They're dumb as hell. Otherwise they'd be us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: otherwise they would have started did a mega church and
Speaker 1: made money off of themselves. Yeah. It's uh, it's like
Speaker 1: it's neo feudalism, you know, totally. That's what Jerry Fallwell
Speaker 1: wants to be, is like a little king with a
Speaker 1: castle and some peasants who have to do what he says. Now,
Speaker 1: and for Jerry Fallwell, America losing its freedom was synonymous
Speaker 1: with America's spending money on stuff like food stamps. In
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies, he made increasing claims that quote,
Speaker 1: federal welfare checks went to bums who wouldn't work in
Speaker 1: a pie shop eating the holes out of donuts. Jerry foul.
Speaker 1: I love that he thinks that's a job. And also
Speaker 1: I want that job. I do want that job. I
Speaker 1: do want that job. To Jerry Fallwell. The roots of
Speaker 1: the economic crisis weren't a global dependence on oil, opex,
Speaker 1: domination of the oil market, or the outrageous spending by
Speaker 1: several presidential administrations on a failed war. The cause was
Speaker 1: welfare spending from Fallwell, because of the heavy taxation demanded
Speaker 1: for the support of a sick and unbalanced welfare program.
Speaker 1: The very heart is being cut out of the business community.
Speaker 1: The government seems to be committed to ta seeing the
Speaker 1: successful businessman right out of business. Yeah, it's a real
Speaker 1: problem in the seventies businessmen being taxed out of business.
Speaker 1: And so for all these reasons, in nineteen eighty, the
Speaker 1: moral Majority turned its back on the most committed evangelical
Speaker 1: Christian to ever hold executive office and extend turned towards
Speaker 1: movie star Ronald Reagan. Wild Yeah, and Reagan didn't really
Speaker 1: know how to deal with the moral Majority, like he
Speaker 1: was didn't really talk about his Christian worldview in his
Speaker 1: first campaign. He didn't really talk about like how it
Speaker 1: had impacted his beliefs or anything like that. Like he
Speaker 1: wasn't that guy. Like nowadays, you can't imagine a Republican
Speaker 1: winning by not like even if it's Trump, like misquoting
Speaker 1: Bible versus they've got to like do that ship. Reagan
Speaker 1: really didn't in his first campaign, And it was actually
Speaker 1: revealed during the election that he donated less than one
Speaker 1: percent of his income to religious causes, which is way
Speaker 1: short of like the ten percent tithing that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do. But for the first and only time, Christian
Speaker 1: conservatives decided it was okay to vote for a man
Speaker 1: who wasn't religious in a against a man who profoundly was, uh,
Speaker 1: in order to get tax benefits because money is the
Speaker 1: real God. Yeah, that that really is like the that's
Speaker 1: my conspiracy theory about Jerry Fallwell. So, once Reagan got elected,
Speaker 1: evangelicals of the moral majority came to believe that they
Speaker 1: had a president who would advance their agenda of like
Speaker 1: getting rid of abortion and bringing back school prayer and
Speaker 1: getting governments to let them not have black kids at
Speaker 1: their schools. Um. And a lot of people who were
Speaker 1: like rational observers of all of this thought that they
Speaker 1: were kind of fooling themselves, um, because there was really
Speaker 1: no chance that Reagan was going to do any of that.
Speaker 1: Ship Like, he was a conservative, but Ronald Reagan wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna wait into like pulling away Rov Wade or reinstituting
Speaker 1: like school prayer or anything like that. And so like
Speaker 1: while they were in office, Reagan's administration would kind of
Speaker 1: like talk nicely to the moral majority, but he actually
Speaker 1: didn't do most of the stuff that they wanted. Um.
Speaker 1: The Reagan administration proved to be a huge disappointment for
Speaker 1: Jerry Fallwell. Throughout his first year in office, Ronnie refused
Speaker 1: to go after any of the social issues the new
Speaker 1: Christian Right had voted him into office to deal with.
Speaker 1: Abortion remained legal, mandatory, school prayer remained illegal. Feminism continued
Speaker 1: at slow march forward. The only social arena in which
Speaker 1: Reagan's corporatist chunk of the Republican Party remained in line
Speaker 1: with the religious right was the oppression of gay people.
Speaker 1: So at least there's that for Jerry Nice to find
Speaker 1: some common ground. Common ground. The common ground is stomping
Speaker 1: on the head of Yeah Yeah. Conservatives in San Francisco
Speaker 1: attempted to criminalize homosexuality during Reagan's term, and the Moral
Speaker 1: Majority launched a boycott of sponsors for TV shows that
Speaker 1: included anything they considered an abomination in the eyes of God.
Speaker 1: As the AIDS crisis kicked off and the death tolls
Speaker 1: started arise from the hundreds to the thousands to the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands, Jerry Folwell was there to blame the
Speaker 1: catastrophe on gay people. I'm going to quote next from
Speaker 1: a National Institute of Health publication. The social impact of
Speaker 1: AIDS on the United States. The Reverend Jerry Fallwell, an
Speaker 1: independent Baptist minister, in a sermon titled how Many Roads
Speaker 1: to Heaven, delivered on his nationally televised Old Time Gospel Hour,
Speaker 1: stated that God was bringing an end to the sexual
Speaker 1: revolution through the AIDS epidemic. He also said, they gay
Speaker 1: men are scared to walk near one of their own
Speaker 1: kind right now, and what we preachers have been enabled
Speaker 1: to do with our preaching. A God who hates sin
Speaker 1: has stopped dead in its tracks by saying do it
Speaker 1: and die? Do it and die follows political organization or
Speaker 1: all majority opposed governmentally funded research to find a cure
Speaker 1: for AIDS because the disease was a gay problem. He
Speaker 1: promoted the idea that AIDS was not only God's judgment
Speaker 1: on gay men, but also that divine judgment extended to
Speaker 1: all of society. AIDS is a lethal judgment of God
Speaker 1: on America for endorsing this vulgar, perverted, and reprobate lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Strong condemnations of gay sexuality is the cause of AIDS
Speaker 1: and God's vengeance also appeared in some religious journals. One
Speaker 1: of them affirmed God warned mankind about AIDS in numbers
Speaker 1: thirty two twenty three when he said be sure your
Speaker 1: sin will find you out. Maybe the AIDS plague will
Speaker 1: educate the world that the Bible is still the bedrock
Speaker 1: of civilization and it should be learned, loved, and lived
Speaker 1: in our daily lives. Wow. I really feel like getting
Speaker 1: people to get into Christianity by saying that God could
Speaker 1: occasionally punish you with AIDS is really not the strongest
Speaker 1: pitch I've heard for Christianity. I really feel like that's
Speaker 1: not If you throw that bagel, you're out of the show.
Speaker 1: I'm just prepure fired. Sophie's face is very just prepping it.
Speaker 1: I have to deal with my rage at reading that
Speaker 1: paragraph somehow, and the way I'm doing it is by
Speaker 1: putting my sling back together and getting it loaded. All right,
Speaker 1: you load it up, but you don't throw a yet.
Speaker 1: Not yet. If you hit the dog, she's not in here. Okay, Yes,
Speaker 1: so this is the best time to throw a bagel. Really, See,
Speaker 1: I planned this out. I didn't. The exact impact of
Speaker 1: fallwell in the moral majority on the death toll of
Speaker 1: the AIDS crisis is impossible to calculate. As with the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies recession. This was a disaster with many factors
Speaker 1: behind it. We dealt with some of that in our
Speaker 1: two part are on the Reagans and the AIDS epidemic.
Speaker 1: The total death told AIDS would measure close to half
Speaker 1: a million by the year two thousand. Much of the
Speaker 1: government and action on AIDS during the crucial early years
Speaker 1: of the outbreak can be blamed on the religious rights
Speaker 1: of vicious rejection of any money being spent to help
Speaker 1: people sick with what was then called the gay plague.
Speaker 1: It's nuts to me to be like, oh, um, we're
Speaker 1: going to meddle in your business and tell you that
Speaker 1: you can be a but also, um, now that you
Speaker 1: need help for what we've called a gay disease, we're
Speaker 1: gonna just completely step away. How do you How do
Speaker 1: you have in both ways where you're like meddling and
Speaker 1: telling people what to do, but then you're also like no,
Speaker 1: but then not this part. It's the same way it
Speaker 1: always works with these people where the only actual moral
Speaker 1: consistency is hate. Yeah, it's true. There's no actual philosophy
Speaker 1: that can stand up to anything. Yeah, if you think
Speaker 1: about the core of it being hate, then it all
Speaker 1: is consistent. Yeah, because there they're justification will change and
Speaker 1: like they'll say like yeah, we shouldn't spend any money. Uh,
Speaker 1: like we we can't you know, spend any money to
Speaker 1: like help out gay people. But also like, uh, we
Speaker 1: can't consider homosexuality in any way as like a government
Speaker 1: and like all these different like contradictory things, but the
Speaker 1: core of it is just they want gay people to die.
Speaker 1: So if you think about it like that, then yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like completely consistent, very consistent kind of what everyone
Speaker 1: who's not white and wealthy to die. Um, but they
Speaker 1: hide the wealthy part from the people that they need
Speaker 1: to vote. I mean, that's drump right now. So saying
Speaker 1: this is kind of where the core of that is
Speaker 1: a political movement came from, because like before this, like
Speaker 1: there were conservatives, but they were like like like Nixon,
Speaker 1: the shitty stuff he did was kind of like there
Speaker 1: was a lot of shitty stuff he did. But you
Speaker 1: could also have a guy like Nixon who would do
Speaker 1: like rational things like well, but of course we need
Speaker 1: to protect the environment and like okay, I'll open trade
Speaker 1: with China even though like there are are big nemesis
Speaker 1: Like that seems quaint now, also bomb camboat you into
Speaker 1: the Stone Age, but like he's not gonna like he's
Speaker 1: he's It was just different, different kind of shitty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've really evolved. We really have evolved thanks to Jerry Fallwell. Now,
Speaker 1: there was an appeal during this time when the Christian
Speaker 1: Broadcasting Network where they asked their followers to write the
Speaker 1: Justice Department in opposition to any relaxation of the rule
Speaker 1: against immigration of HIV infected persons, and that don't generated
Speaker 1: forty letters. And I can't think of anything more christ
Speaker 1: like than not wanting sick immigrants to be helped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as as Jesus said, fuck you got mine. Famous. So
Speaker 1: abortion remained a key issue for the moral majority throughout
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. They did not see much support from
Speaker 1: the regular administration on this. Folwell's tactic was to seek
Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade, since the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court had already declared that this undue restriction of
Speaker 1: abortion was a violation of constitutionals. His first step towards
Speaker 1: achieving this was the Human Life Bill, which would have
Speaker 1: written into American law that life begins at conception and
Speaker 1: that a fetus is a living person. But the Human
Speaker 1: Life Bill never passed. Follows embraced this tactic set the
Speaker 1: tone of the abortion debate, though in a way that
Speaker 1: rings through to this day. The Reagan administration was never
Speaker 1: quite willing to take real action, though, because that would
Speaker 1: have cost them the political capital that they preferred to
Speaker 1: spend on de regulation and de institutionalization. But later on
Speaker 1: Reagan at all would throw a few bones to the
Speaker 1: moral majority. In nineteen eighty two, one of his allies
Speaker 1: in the Senate introduced a constitutional amendment that would have
Speaker 1: made it legal to have official school prayers as long
Speaker 1: as individual students or teachers couldn't be forced to say
Speaker 1: that prayer. The amendment never came particularly close to passing,
Speaker 1: and Reagan himself failed to go to bat for it
Speaker 1: in any significant way. Though early in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: Reagan's Justice and Treasury departments did reverse the I R.
Speaker 1: S revocation of tax exempt status for Bob Jones University,
Speaker 1: but this sparked a massive backlash at the administration for
Speaker 1: basically supporting segregation with taxpayer dollars. Yeah, yeah, Baba Jones
Speaker 1: keeps insisting, like, no, we're really committed to segregation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's our religious beliefs. It's not based on racism. It's
Speaker 1: based on what we think God wants, which we know
Speaker 1: about beer than anyone, which is racism, but not our
Speaker 1: racism God God. So it's fine, It's totally not us.
Speaker 1: So uh. Reagan back pedaled and announced that he was
Speaker 1: now seeking a congressional ban on tax exemptions for racially
Speaker 1: discriminatory schools. This happened, and so while the Moral Majority
Speaker 1: wound up supporting Reagan's reelection campaign, the Christian right came
Speaker 1: out the other side of the Reagan years deeply disappointed
Speaker 1: in conservative politics. We only got some of what we wanted.
Speaker 1: We didn't get everything. Jerry Fallwell, however, was not the
Speaker 1: kind of guy to put all of his eggs in
Speaker 1: one basket. Throughout the early years of the Moral Majority,
Speaker 1: and over the course of Reagan's two terms, Jerry fought
Speaker 1: an epic battle for the soul of the First Amendment
Speaker 1: with a man who might rightly be viewed as his
Speaker 1: greatest nemesis, Larry Flint. Larry Flint Baby, finally a hero.
Speaker 1: Finally a hero arrives. And we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that hero. But you know what else is a hero?
Speaker 1: Sophia the corporations who sponsored this podcast. It's Coke Industries.
Speaker 1: Coke Industries, you mean Coke Hero when dis tries Hero
Speaker 1: Industries by Coke products. No, no, no, Sophie is so
Speaker 1: mad at you. Sophie's very mad at me. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: I'm distracted thinking about when I'm going to utilize the
Speaker 1: sling next. The mold on that vegel is truly discussed.
Speaker 1: Isn't so much mold on this vegel? He keeps putting
Speaker 1: it next to the food I actually put in my mouth,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, why are you doing that? I can't
Speaker 1: explain my actions, I just do them. Speaking of which products,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans posted behind the Bastards and after a
Speaker 1: long day of reading about terrible people, nothing helps me
Speaker 1: calm down like cooking and eating a great meal. But
Speaker 1: it takes a long time to go to the grocery
Speaker 1: store and to figure out like different recipes to cook,
Speaker 1: which is why Hello Fresh has been so simple for me.
Speaker 1: They mail the food right to your door, along with
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Speaker 1: dot com slash bTB nine. We're back, and Sophie is
Speaker 1: saying mean things to me, I think in an attempt
Speaker 1: to get me to throw this bagel. No one's attempting
Speaker 1: to get you to throw that. Everybody's excited for me
Speaker 1: to throw this bagel. That's really the highlight of the show.
Speaker 1: That's what keeps the listeners coming back. That bagel touches
Speaker 1: me from him. I can't promise it won't. I can't
Speaker 1: promise what I'll do. That's fine, great, This is a
Speaker 1: tense standoff. I can't wait to see how it resolves
Speaker 1: every podcast. Nothing goes better with an audio medium than
Speaker 1: a standoff based mainly on eye contact, also saying I
Speaker 1: would pick her in a fight. Yeah. Also, we're wearing
Speaker 1: pretty much the exact same outfit. Kind of we are
Speaker 1: wearing the exact same outfit. Is gonna be like me
Speaker 1: fighting my own shadow So if you can that be
Speaker 1: the ad plug for the or the video plug for
Speaker 1: the episode, you guys fighting, I mean sure, shadow box. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Larry Flint. We finally have a hero.
Speaker 1: Are you excited for this? So excited? Like you big
Speaker 1: Fani Larry Flint? I mean, who doesn't love Larry Flint.
Speaker 1: Larry Flint. That movie was so fun. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the best smut peddlers there who was ever peddled smut?
Speaker 1: And I say that top three with love in case
Speaker 1: you weren't aware. Larry Flint is one of the most
Speaker 1: infamous UH smut peddlers of all time. He's the founder
Speaker 1: of Hustler magazine, a trailblazer in the field of pornography,
Speaker 1: and as a child, he claims to have lost his
Speaker 1: virginity to a literal chicken. Did you know that chicken? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he grew up on a farm and he said, like
Speaker 1: farm kids would suck animals and that's how we lost it,
Speaker 1: he claimed for years, that's how he lost its virginity
Speaker 1: to a chicken. Interesting. I mean I figured farm animals, sure,
Speaker 1: but chicken seems very he really specific and consistent chick.
Speaker 1: I mean they have to be able to push an
Speaker 1: egg out, so I imagine there would be more room
Speaker 1: in there for your teenage farm boy Dick. I hate
Speaker 1: this continue, I just I just everyone should know that
Speaker 1: the hero of today's episode is a chicken fucker and
Speaker 1: no one's even going to care by the end of
Speaker 1: this story. Yeah, because he's on the right side of history. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Larry Flint as a chicken fucking porn salesman is perhaps
Speaker 1: an unlikely pick for the man who literally saved free
Speaker 1: speech as we know it, but he is, in fact
Speaker 1: the man who literally saved free speech as we know it.
Speaker 1: His story is extremely well documented and you can find
Speaker 1: a number of different write ups of what happened for
Speaker 1: our purposes, and I'm going to quote the man, the myth,
Speaker 1: the legend, the chicken rapist himself Larry Flint. This is
Speaker 1: for an article he wrote the l A Times, Tucking
Speaker 1: about the duel between him and Fallwell and how it
Speaker 1: first began. I was publishing Hustler magazine, which most people
Speaker 1: know has been pushing the envelope of taste from the
Speaker 1: very beginning, and Folwell was blasting me. Every chance he
Speaker 1: had he would talk about how I was a slime
Speaker 1: deally responsible for the decay of all morals. He called
Speaker 1: me every terrible name he could think of. Names is bad,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, as any language used in my magazine.
Speaker 1: After several years of listening to him bad me and
Speaker 1: read his insults, I decided it was time to start
Speaker 1: poking some fun at him. So he ran a parody
Speaker 1: ad and Hustler, a take off on the then current
Speaker 1: Campari ads, in which people were interviewed describing their first time.
Speaker 1: In the ads, it ultimately became clear that the interviewees
Speaker 1: were describing their first time sipping campari. But not in
Speaker 1: our parody, we had fall Well describing his first time
Speaker 1: as having been with his mother, drunk off our god
Speaker 1: fearing asses in an outhouse. Pastor Fallwell did not take
Speaker 1: this joke. Well, Oh, it's so crazy. He seems like
Speaker 1: he would have such a good I think he'd be
Speaker 1: able to laugh at himself with all the pranks he's
Speaker 1: pulled on other people, like that hilarious burning down the street.
Speaker 1: He did not find this funny, and he sued Larry
Speaker 1: and his magazine for libel in Virginia. The lawsuits started
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, not long after the Moral Majority found
Speaker 1: themselves frustrated by Reagan waffling on tax exemptions in school prayer.
Speaker 1: It's possible Jerry's hunger for a win as part of
Speaker 1: what drove him in this endeavor. For a while the
Speaker 1: case went well for him. Flint lost in the Jerry
Speaker 1: trial and again in federal appeals court. Now, if Flint
Speaker 1: had lost, he'd have had to pay Jerry two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for, in Larry's words, hurting his feelings. Um. He
Speaker 1: wasn't willing to do this, and so he appealed to
Speaker 1: the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he lost again.
Speaker 1: So Larry appealed once but more uh, and that was
Speaker 1: a decision with significant cost to him. He spent about
Speaker 1: three million dollars in total on the lawsuits. But by
Speaker 1: escalating at this high he also kind of risked the
Speaker 1: First Amendment for everybody, um, which was a certainly a
Speaker 1: complicated decision to weigh. Um because since it had been
Speaker 1: escalated to the Supreme Court and like way out of
Speaker 1: like Virginia politics. Um, that meant that, like, now, what
Speaker 1: was at stake wasn't just a state level libel trial. Uh,
Speaker 1: Larry was and he claims he didn't really think about
Speaker 1: this at the time, taking a gamble with the entirety
Speaker 1: of the First Amendment. UM. So now, like the case
Speaker 1: was not just about like whether or not he'd violated
Speaker 1: Virginia law, but whether or not the First Amendment protected
Speaker 1: powerful people from being made fun of. Um. And that
Speaker 1: like kind of was the core of the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: case that Larry Flint waged against Jerry Falwell. And if
Speaker 1: he'd lost, it would have essentially removed First Amendment protections
Speaker 1: from the parody of public figures. Thankfully, for all of us,
Speaker 1: but most particularly late night TV hosts, the Justice is
Speaker 1: ruled that even gross and repugnant parody of a public
Speaker 1: figure was protected by the First Amendment. I mean satire.
Speaker 1: If we don't have satire, what do we have? And
Speaker 1: that's what the Supreme Court decided, and so because of
Speaker 1: Larry Flint, that's not something we even have to debate over.
Speaker 1: It's like settled jurisprudence. Um. So that's good. Chief Justice
Speaker 1: Request explained that had they ruled against Flint, all any
Speaker 1: public figure would ever have to prove is that a
Speaker 1: writer made them feel bad to sue them and their
Speaker 1: publication into oblivion. Um, which yeah, would have brought about
Speaker 1: the end of free speech as we know it. So
Speaker 1: Larry Flint both gambled and saved free speech. Uh, in
Speaker 1: the course of a couple of years. Goody, good for you, Larry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from Larry's right up again. Everyone was
Speaker 1: shocked at our victory, and no one more so than Fallwell,
Speaker 1: who on the day of the decision called me a
Speaker 1: sleege merchant hiding behind the First Amendment. Still, over time,
Speaker 1: Fallwell was forced to publicly come to grips with the
Speaker 1: reality that this is America where you can make fun
Speaker 1: of anyone you want. Yeah. Yeah. As the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: rolled along, the death toll from AIDS. Sorry we're getting
Speaker 1: back to AIDS now. Yeah, you can't read that in
Speaker 1: the same happy voice you just read that decision. Nope, nope.
Speaker 1: Tone shifting is a real problem for me. But here
Speaker 1: we are. The death toll from AIDS rose from to
Speaker 1: the hundreds of thousands, partly as a consequence, mainstream America
Speaker 1: began to gradually wake up to the idea that gay
Speaker 1: people are human beings and maybe didn't deserve to be
Speaker 1: abandoned to die horribly by a sociopathic government. Well, most
Speaker 1: of the country slowly started to accept homosexual people as
Speaker 1: fellow citizens. Jerry fall Will continue to be a huge
Speaker 1: piece of ship. When the Clinton administration pushed forward its
Speaker 1: healthcare reform plan, fall Will complain in a video that
Speaker 1: this would allow AIDS patients to receive treatment without quote
Speaker 1: any penalty for their abusive lie styles. What the fuck
Speaker 1: he's like, if you live, I want you to be punished.
Speaker 1: I want you to go to jail for the crime
Speaker 1: costing government money to treat you having a relationship with
Speaker 1: someone you love. What a human piece of shit? Yeah,
Speaker 1: really a human piece of ship. Jerry Folwell in his
Speaker 1: tax exempt church, he quoted right wing firebrand Rush Limbaugh
Speaker 1: when the piladicted old bastard Wine that allowing gays in
Speaker 1: the military would bankrupt the government due to the cost
Speaker 1: of their AIDS care, and the parade of bigotry went
Speaker 1: on from there. I'm going to quote from God's right
Speaker 1: hand again. In nine, in a mailing sent out to
Speaker 1: supporters of the Liberty Alliance, Folwell wrote that the Clinton
Speaker 1: administration is set to award thousands and thousands of immigration
Speaker 1: visas to foreigners who are infected with a lethal, fatal
Speaker 1: and deadly AIDS virus. It's lethal, fatal and deadly sophia. Well,
Speaker 1: but if it's well, the first to cancel each other out,
Speaker 1: so it's really only the last one just deadly, just
Speaker 1: really dodged a bullet there, so they can come to America.
Speaker 1: That's right. The administration is putting the health, welfare, public
Speaker 1: safety in life of every American at risk just so
Speaker 1: these homo sexuals can hold an Olympic Games for gays
Speaker 1: and lesbians and transvestites and bisexuals and pedophiles and sodomites
Speaker 1: and exhibitionists and cross dressers and every other sexual deviant
Speaker 1: on the planet with perverted proclivities. That is a long
Speaker 1: less that is a lot. But also he doesn't know
Speaker 1: shit about what people do. No, he does not uh no,
Speaker 1: he does not. I will say that's actually one of
Speaker 1: the things you've got to give Jerry Fowell that you
Speaker 1: don't have to give his kids is he was morally consistent.
Speaker 1: He believed shitty things and he lived shitty things, whereas
Speaker 1: his kids just say shitty things. Yeah, and they don't
Speaker 1: believe him. No, no, no, they don't at all. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know which is better, but there's no better.
Speaker 1: It's a ship sandwich. It's a ship sandwich. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: fundraising appeal warned that these deviants would infect Americans with
Speaker 1: the AIDS virus before leaving to fame. Your pastors invade
Speaker 1: your neighborhoods and recruit your children. Always comes back to that,
Speaker 1: whether it's yeah, just teaching children to be gay, just
Speaker 1: out there gay immigrants are going to recruit your kids.
Speaker 1: The late nineteen nineties brought Larry Flint and Jerry Folwell
Speaker 1: back together, this time as friends. Histories autist bromance started
Speaker 1: in the nineteen episode of The Larry King Show. Flint
Speaker 1: was promoting his recent autobiography, and Larry brought Fallwell out.
Speaker 1: The pastor greeted his former rival warmly with literal hugs
Speaker 1: and kisses. And then started dropping by his office on
Speaker 1: visits to California. The two had a series of polite
Speaker 1: debates on morality and First Amendment issues that went on
Speaker 1: for nearly a decade. This is Larry Flint. In the
Speaker 1: years that followed up and up until his death, he'd
Speaker 1: come to see me every time he was in California.
Speaker 1: We'd have interesting philosophical conversations. We'd exchanged personal Christmas cards,
Speaker 1: He'd show me pictures of his grandchildren. I was with
Speaker 1: him in Florida once when he complained about his health
Speaker 1: and his weight, so I suggested he'd go on a
Speaker 1: diet that worked for me. I faxed a copy to
Speaker 1: his wife when I got back home. Now it's interesting
Speaker 1: me because, like you kind of see the core of
Speaker 1: Fallwell's issue. If Larry Flint had just been like a
Speaker 1: poor guy running like a fly by night porn magazine
Speaker 1: out of his apartment, fall Wall would never have wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to him. But like, fundamentally, just respect another
Speaker 1: white guy with money exactly. That's really what it is
Speaker 1: for him. Yeah, Yeah, that's his primary loyalty is too
Speaker 1: other rich guys with money like gross Gross in God's
Speaker 1: right hand, Michael Winter's notes that Fallwell was constitutionally incapable
Speaker 1: of eating healthy food. His favorite breakfast was a cheddar
Speaker 1: cheese omelet with sausage, which he generally ate at a
Speaker 1: Bob Evans restaurant near his church. Everybody looked at me
Speaker 1: as soon as I said that, I've been getting that
Speaker 1: ship since I was a kid growing up in the
Speaker 1: fucking Yeah. As a now an elderly man in his
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, fall Will continued his brutal schedule, traveling
Speaker 1: across the nation to preach, as well as running Liberty University,
Speaker 1: raising funds, and of course preaching at his own church.
Speaker 1: Agent illness did not slow him down, nor did it
Speaker 1: put an end to his hot takes. Yeah, in Jerry
Speaker 1: threw down one of the hottest takes in the history
Speaker 1: of hot takes. The Teletubby's A surreal British Children show
Speaker 1: that I don't really know how to summarize if you
Speaker 1: have not seen it and aren't aware of what it
Speaker 1: looked like, took America by storm that year. Most people
Speaker 1: saw it as a weird but basically harmless way to
Speaker 1: keep children entertained. Not Jerry, Jerry, Yeah, you remember this one.
Speaker 1: The purple Teletubby. Yeah, he saw it as a sinister
Speaker 1: attempt to infect the minds of young children with devilish
Speaker 1: gay propaganda. I'm going to quote from God's right hand again.
Speaker 1: Falwell's Liberty Journal discerned to sinister agenda regarding Tinky Winky.
Speaker 1: He is purple, the gay Pride color, and his antenna
Speaker 1: is shaped like a triangle, the gay Pride symbol, noted
Speaker 1: the February issue. If that was not enough, Tinky Winky
Speaker 1: carried a magic bag that Folwell's editors thought looked suspiciously
Speaker 1: like a purse. Her to accuse the producers of intentionally
Speaker 1: putting subtle depictions of gay sexuality in the show, and
Speaker 1: said that such role modeling of the gay lifestyle was
Speaker 1: damaging to the moral lives of children. Again, such nerds,
Speaker 1: such fucking nerds, gigantic, fucking nerds, and the way Larry
Speaker 1: Flint summarizes this issue is fucking hysterical to me. When
Speaker 1: he was getting blasted for his ridiculous homophobic comments after
Speaker 1: he wrote his Tinky Winky article cautioning parents that the
Speaker 1: purple Teletubby character was in fact gay, I called him
Speaker 1: in Florida and yelled at him to leave the tinky
Speaker 1: winkies alone. Oh my god, Larry Flints. That's amazing. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: You know what else is amazing, Sophia, These goods and services,
Speaker 1: products and services. Sorry, we don't sell goods on this show.
Speaker 1: Goods in our products and products are goods products. We're back.
Speaker 1: I'm taking some flak from Sophie, but I've still got
Speaker 1: my bagel sling. Oh yeah, it's gonna do some damage, Sophie,
Speaker 1: gonna do some damage. So there were some signs over
Speaker 1: the years that Jerry Fallwell might soften his attitude towards
Speaker 1: homosexuality in the same way he reversed his opinion on segregation.
Speaker 1: One of these was the torture and murder of Matthew
Speaker 1: Shepard in October of nineteen. Fred Phelps in the Westboro
Speaker 1: Baptist Church, being giant pieces of ship, protested Shepherd's funeral.
Speaker 1: Jerry Fallwell, being a slightly smaller piece of ship, had
Speaker 1: enough human decency to be sickened by this. He got
Speaker 1: together with a Christian pro gay activist to hold a
Speaker 1: summit on non violence within the evangelical community. Literally the hey,
Speaker 1: we should stop murdering gay people. Maybe, yeah, we should
Speaker 1: talk about murdering gay people, which you know, it took
Speaker 1: him what six years, four to five years when he
Speaker 1: had that epiphany about segregation, So you know, he was
Speaker 1: really turning it over in his head. Is it wrong
Speaker 1: for us to murder gay people? Yeah? Yeah, he was. Really,
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm gonna take my time on this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really it. So Fallwell failed refused to reconsider his
Speaker 1: position that homosexuality went against the Bible and the will
Speaker 1: of God. But he did stand in front of a
Speaker 1: pastichiou photos of murdered gay people and state his desire
Speaker 1: for peace inside both camps. Are people more interested in
Speaker 1: peace than in war and glorifying God than in getting
Speaker 1: their point across. He mentioned his friendship with Larry Flint
Speaker 1: as evidence that he and his ministry supported love for people,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether he approved of their behavior. He said
Speaker 1: to the gay community, we have not done that with you.
Speaker 1: We apologize for that, we ask your forgiveness for that.
Speaker 1: So yea yeay, it's the right ish thing done eventually
Speaker 1: kind of sort of, let's read the next paragraph. Folwell
Speaker 1: supported George W. Bush in the two thousand election. However,
Speaker 1: he was not the same force that he had been
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighty election. For one thing, he was
Speaker 1: older and less influential, but the religious right he organized
Speaker 1: and formed into a weapon of political domination had only
Speaker 1: grown more powerful. George Bush lost one with the help
Speaker 1: of evangelical Christianity, and his administration would cater to them
Speaker 1: in a more direct way than the Reagan administration had,
Speaker 1: particularly with things like the proposed Defensive Marriage Act. As
Speaker 1: you might expect, Jerry's reaction to the terrorist attacks on
Speaker 1: September eleven, two one were uniquely shitty. While most of
Speaker 1: America grieved and worked to process their fear and rage
Speaker 1: and the wake of the most spectacularly deadly terrorist attack
Speaker 1: in history, Jerry lashed out at who else, gay people? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get it, you're really getting a feel for this guy. Well,
Speaker 1: I just also remember this. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Two days after the attack, while guesting on Pat Robertson's
Speaker 1: show The Seven hundred Club, Folwell said, this, what we
Speaker 1: saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be
Speaker 1: miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain
Speaker 1: and allow the enemies of America to give us probably
Speaker 1: what we deserve. Pat, who was also a huge piece
Speaker 1: of ship, Agreed, Jerry, that's my feeling, and I feel
Speaker 1: we've just seen the anti chamber to terror. We haven't
Speaker 1: even begun to see what they can do to the
Speaker 1: major population. And shortly after that, I fall all got
Speaker 1: down to explaining who he thought was really to blame
Speaker 1: for all this. The abortionists have got to bear some
Speaker 1: burden for this, because God will not be mocked. And
Speaker 1: when we destroy forty million little innocent babies, we make
Speaker 1: God mad. I really believe that the Pagans and the
Speaker 1: abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians
Speaker 1: who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle,
Speaker 1: the a C L you people for the American way,
Speaker 1: all of them have tried to secularize America. I point
Speaker 1: the finger in their face and say, you help this happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's helping the country. Hell, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Things. What I love about the wake of
Speaker 1: nine eleven is how it brought us all together. Ye
Speaker 1: really made us the best version of ourselves. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a what a beautiful way. If only we could
Speaker 1: get back to that. Yeah, how can we be the
Speaker 1: people we were at that moment? Yeah, before we blamed ourselves,
Speaker 1: and when we blamed everyone else women and abolitionists, and yeah,
Speaker 1: the a c l U and gay c LU. I
Speaker 1: mean there's an extent to which that we could just
Speaker 1: take this, we could like adopt this as kind of
Speaker 1: an empowering statement, like, yeah, we did make nine eleven
Speaker 1: half and guys, we fucked those towers up. Good good
Speaker 1: on us? Oh my god, So what's it like? What's
Speaker 1: the weather like in in your end of Canceledania? Right now?
Speaker 1: I will let you know when my I helped cause
Speaker 1: nine eleven t shirts gone sale at public Sophie, how
Speaker 1: how close are we to getting those out? She just said,
Speaker 1: fucking kill me? And I appreciate that these comments caused
Speaker 1: an uproar, which was not enough to stop President Bush
Speaker 1: from inviting Jerry Fallwell to speak at the National Cathedral
Speaker 1: that year. Shortly after that, fall will release a non
Speaker 1: apology apology. Despite the impressions some may have from news
Speaker 1: reports today, I hold no one other than the terrorists
Speaker 1: and the people and nations who have enabled and harbored
Speaker 1: them responsible for Tuesday's attack on this nation. I sincerely
Speaker 1: regret that the comments I made during a long theological
Speaker 1: discussion on a Christian television program yesterday. We're taken out
Speaker 1: of their context and reported that my thoughts reduced to
Speaker 1: sound bites, have detracted from the spirit of this day
Speaker 1: of morning. Okay, that's a bly. We all heard what
Speaker 1: you said. What you know doesn't strike you as a
Speaker 1: real apology. The fact that there's no I'm sorry in there.
Speaker 1: But all he said was you helped this happen. He's
Speaker 1: not saying that they committed nine eleven. They just enabled
Speaker 1: nine eleven. You wouldn't arrest a guy for enabling a murderer, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's conspiracy to commit murder. And then it does sound
Speaker 1: like Jerry Fowl was accusing that kind of does sound
Speaker 1: like that by our new I helped enabled nine eleven shirts.
Speaker 1: Not a fan of this one. I want to take
Speaker 1: the bagel sling so bad. Aim at your stupid face
Speaker 1: right now. Oh, the shirt could be somebody knocking down
Speaker 1: the North Tower with a bagel from Robert You're fucking fired. Stop.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be in Cansylvania by nightfall. Area. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: in the lowest levels of Pennsylvania right now. LOUI c
Speaker 1: k is several floors above you. What does this mean
Speaker 1: that iss and sorry is going to open for me? Now? No,
Speaker 1: he is doing better than you. You would hope to open,
Speaker 1: and you're not allowed. Yeah, you'r Weinstein level. Cosby is
Speaker 1: in your kitchen making you t right now, let me
Speaker 1: try my canceled apology. Okay, I am sorry that comments
Speaker 1: I made about me causing nine eleven were taken out
Speaker 1: of context by you and that it offended you. I
Speaker 1: am sorry that you were offended by the things that
Speaker 1: were said by someone who may have been me, But
Speaker 1: I do not apologize specifically for the statement itself, or
Speaker 1: for its intent or for its intent. Was that a
Speaker 1: good apology? Yes? I feel a lot better, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot from the people that I've written about.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah. Well, the neo cons Fallwell had helped
Speaker 1: into office launched two disastrous, very poorly waged and executed
Speaker 1: wars that crippled our military and loaded future generations down
Speaker 1: with unspeakable debt. Jerry Fallwell spent his last few years
Speaker 1: seeing to his empire. In two thousand four, he opened
Speaker 1: a law school at Liberty University, stating we planned to
Speaker 1: turn out conservative lawyers the same way Harvard turns out liberals,
Speaker 1: notable leftist Bastion Harvard, and two thousand five, his health
Speaker 1: took a sharp down swing. He suffered a heart attack,
Speaker 1: which he unfortunately survived. He recovered, but took this as
Speaker 1: a sign that he should start preparing to hand over
Speaker 1: the reins of his empire to his son, Jerry Jr.
Speaker 1: Why don't you take that as a sign that you're
Speaker 1: being evil. It's like nine eleven the Gays caused what
Speaker 1: did how? How did you cause your own heart attack? Buddy?
Speaker 1: Is it too much hate? They never never seemed to
Speaker 1: really think that God did that because they were bad.
Speaker 1: That is weird, super strange. Yeah, even in the twilight
Speaker 1: of his life, Jerry Fall will continue to play shitty
Speaker 1: pranks on people. Oh my god, one more prank story.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm gonna quote from God's right Hare.
Speaker 1: He just joked about murdering people. He drove his suv
Speaker 1: around campus, developing a new prank of revving the motorate
Speaker 1: students as they walked in front of the Vehicle's great,
Speaker 1: but that's threatening to run children over with your car.
Speaker 1: I love the ship. All shitty people have the same
Speaker 1: definition of prank, and it's making people fear for their lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. He equipped his suv with an especially loud
Speaker 1: horn that he would blow it unsuspecting pedestrians. What a dick.
Speaker 1: That's at least closer to a prank. What a fucking dick.
Speaker 1: On Mai seven, Jerry fall Will ate breakfast at the
Speaker 1: Bob Evans restaurant near his house. Afterwards, he entered his
Speaker 1: office and suffered a massive heart attack. Thankfully, the paramedics
Speaker 1: failed to revive him this time, and he stayed dead.
Speaker 1: And that, Praise the Lord, is the end of Jerry
Speaker 1: Folwell story. But it is not the end of the
Speaker 1: Fallwell story. And it was only the beginning of the
Speaker 1: story of the institution known as Liberty University. But that,
Speaker 1: my friends, is a story that will have to wait
Speaker 1: for another week. But I have it written here, Sophia.
Speaker 1: How you feeling I mean refreshed? Because now, he said,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's only one way to really celebrate
Speaker 1: the death of Jerry Fallwell. If that bagel hits either
Speaker 1: of us, I will punch you in the nuts. You'll
Speaker 1: be right to do so. And okay, it's a deal.
Speaker 1: I fell behind you. You don't even deserve to throw
Speaker 1: it It's like the erectile dysfunction of bagel throwing right
Speaker 1: out of the hoop. Alright, alright, guys, it's gonna happen
Speaker 1: now there's no star. Yeah, that was dangerously your Sophie's head.
Speaker 1: It was anything you do with a sling and a
Speaker 1: tiny enclosed recording studio is going to be dangerous. I
Speaker 1: mean if one day Sophie slips something in your drink
Speaker 1: and you deserve it, you have a massive heart attack
Speaker 1: after eating Bob Jones diner dinner. I mean, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get your us right, the cheese omelet with sausage, and
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have a nice Now, a hater attack
Speaker 1: causes your heart attack. Hater tach hater tech. All right,
Speaker 1: I have to leave. I feel like hate kept alive. Yep,
Speaker 1: you want to plug your plug doubles? Sure? Um. You
Speaker 1: guys can find me on Twitter and Instagram at the
Speaker 1: Sophia so f I y A, and you can find
Speaker 1: me co hosting private parts of Known, my podcast with
Speaker 1: Corney Kosak about love and sexuality around the world, and
Speaker 1: for Twenty Day Fiance, my podcast with Miles Gray about
Speaker 1: ninety day fiance. And you can find me on the
Speaker 1: internet at behind the Bastards dot com, where we'll have
Speaker 1: all of the sources for this. I'd also like to
Speaker 1: say special thanks to Corey who made this wonderful sling
Speaker 1: that has improved all of our days. Burn in hell, Corey,
Speaker 1: you burn in hell. And if someone wants to um
Speaker 1: draw fan art of George Clooney and No Wiley kissing,
Speaker 1: touching penises whatever taking down the World Trade Center, please
Speaker 1: tweet that at me. What the fuck? Tune that at me?
Speaker 1: And also cancel Robert Cashtag, Cancel Robert, cancel Roberts uh
Speaker 1: t shirts, public dot com, at Bastards pod, Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'm I right okay on Twitter, where you can tell
Speaker 1: me that I'm canceled to my digital face. And this
Speaker 1: is the end of the episode. Is not the end
Speaker 1: of the episode? What else do we do? Sophie? We
Speaker 1: have another podcast Katie Stolen Cody Johnston. We have another
Speaker 1: podcast with Katie Stolen Cody Johnston called NPRS Radio Lab.
Speaker 1: Oh no, we actually we actually we actually we actually
Speaker 1: beat them last week in the ratings worst year ever.
Speaker 1: All right, you brought it back. I like that. I
Speaker 1: like that. Here's your bagel. I gotta bagel. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw it one more time. This is This
Speaker 1: one's for you, Corey. Feel like it's coming from me.
Speaker 1: You're trying to get something here, which I do not.
Speaker 1: I can't. I've gently kicked it towards you now, all right,
Speaker 1: Well that's all the bagel throwing I'm gonna do today
Speaker 1: with this link. Thanks Corey,