The national media coverage of the death of Jerry Falwell has centered on his comments about the gay Teletubby and the causes of 9/11. But Darrell Laurant, a columnist for The News-Advance in Lynchburg, Va., Falwell’s hometown, has a more rounded take on the man.
The product of a rough-and-tumble childhood, son of a hard-drinking and hard-fisted father, Falwell came into public life wearing the hide of a rhinoceros. Insults ricocheted off him – and if the person doing the insulting was well-known enough, Falwell would gleefully invite them to a debate.
Indeed, he loved juxtaposing his own views with those of famous opponents, inviting the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sen. Ted Kennedy to his church to speak and developing a curious but apparently sincere friendship with Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt (whom he had once sued for libel).
According to Laurant, he resisted being changed by fame:
As his national fame swirled around him, he still considered himself the pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church before anything else. He still performed the funerals and the weddings and the hospital visitations.
