Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502240044
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When I first met him, he didn't care much for the local or regional media. He wouldn't talk to the religion writer for the Lynchburg newspaper. A former reporter for the Roanoke Times & World-News had alienated Falwell's spokesman a couple of years before.
Still, Falwell was known as a charming interview subject.
One story, probably true, is that a reporter for a certain national magazine doing a story on Falwell didn't even want to meet him, fearing he'd like the minister and not be able to write all the nasty things his other sources were saying about him.
Those national media types were the ones Falwell got accustomed to handling. They were after him constantly until his decision in the late 1980s to get out of the PTL quagmire and to disband the Moral Majority.
As the televangelism scandals festered, Falwell sensed trouble at home. Donations to his ministry plummeted, threatening the institution dearest to his heart, Liberty University.
It was time to get back home and tend to the business of keeping afloat the school he wanted to be "America's premier Christian university."
Falwell retreated from the national spotlight. Over time, he was less in demand by "Nightline" and he became more accessible to local reporters.
It was during this period that I met him. He still wasn't speaking to the Lynchburg paper, but he would talk to ours - even allowing us to put our newspaper racks on the Liberty campus.
Falwell's reputation as a charming, quotable interview proved to be straight on target. In conversation, he is likeable, quick, funny, relaxed, possessed with an air of sincerity, careful with his words but with a countenance of complete openness.
He is a hard man not to like, and we have had a cordial relationship ever since.
That is not to say he's been delighted with everything that I've ever written about him. Likewise, that does not mean I have not found some of his actions - as man and a minister - questionable.
Specifically, in his zeal to raise money for his ministry, I believe he sometimes has overstepped the bounds of good taste and Christian charity.
At no time has that been more evident than in his offer of videos that accuse Bill and Hillary Clinton of a variety of sins, from adultery to murder, and in his refusal to let a Clinton supporter respond to the charges on Falwell's television program.
The allegations are unsubstantiated - offered by Clinton enemies from Arkansas without any shred of credible proof.
Falwell showed excerpts from the tapes on his "Old Time Gospel Hour" TV program and offered them for sale. At least 40,000 sets were distributed at $40 or so - MasterCard or Visa preferred. How much Falwell got of that has not been disclosed.
Falwell has acknowledged that he does not have any evidence to back up the charges on the tapes. He contends, however, that the videos represent a legitimate news story that has been overlooked by the liberal, Clinton-loving media and that the American people deserve a chance to see and hear an unexpurgated recitation of these charges.
Falwell is not alone in the Christian ministry in offering slander and gossip against a fellow Christian. Nationally syndicated Christian talk-radio host Marlin Maddoux has aired equally mean-spirited and unsubstantiated vitriol about the Clintons, and nobody knows how many local pastors and small-town Christian radio and television talk-show personalities have picked up and spread the same messages.
It is a strange reversal of fortunes.
Just a dozen years ago, Falwell spent a lot of time in court trying to win $45 million in damages from Hustler magazine and its publisher, Larry Flynt, for a scandalous advertising parody that accused Falwell of drunkenness and incest. Many journalists reluctantly defended the magazine's right to print satire - even vicious, contemptible satire - as a legitimate expression of the First Amendment right to a free press.
In a bizarre verdict, a jury ruled that the magazine had a right to publish the satirical ad, but that Falwell was due damages for the hurt he suffered. The damage award was overturned.
Falwell complained - with some justification, I think - about his vulnerability to that kind of vile lie. Though it is hard to draw lines around the protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, this appeared to many to be a case where the satire so grossly violated every sense of public decency that some relief was justified.
But, rather than committing himself to fight similar injustices wherever he might find them, Falwell seems to have joined amoral, godless Larry Flynt in the tactic of sleazy character assassination by innuendo and defamation.
In recent weeks, Falwell has refused to let well-known evangelical minister Tony Campolo answer the charges against the Clintons on the "Old Time Gospel Hour," even though Falwell challenged Clinton in print to respond to them.
Falwell continues to sell the videotapes, even though he knows they are made up entirely of rumor and hearsay and gossip and slander.
That is wrong - an affront to the Christ and the Christianity that he preaches, and a stain on his ministry.
Is Bill Clinton guilty of adultery? Before his election to the presidency most people assumed he was, but enough voted for him anyway to inaugurate him. Voters concluded, apparently, that his wife and his God would have to judge that particular sin.
Is Clinton guilty of conspiring to murder his political enemies or those who might politically embarrass him? Nobody in his right mind believes that. There have been no great national news stories on that subject because - to date, anyway - no credible evidence exists to suggest there is even a microbe of truth to the charges. And that includes the evidence on the tapes Falwell has sold.
I know he won't do it, but I wish my brother Jerry Falwell would admit he was wrong on this one. I wish he would apologize for failing to follow his Savior's command to refrain from gossip and slander.
A bold and brave repudiation of the tapes would do more than anything I can think of to heal the still inflamed wounds on the "body of Christ" inflicted by the Bakkers and Swaggarts.
And I believe it would be good for the soul of Jerry Falwell.
by CNB