Rest in Pieces, Jerry

I was very tired when I wrote this as a Return to Sender column for Phillyist. It's a little disjointed and not particularly relevant, which is why we decided not to run it. But here it is, with all its contradictions, right after the jump.

Dear Jerry Falwell:

Yeah, yeah. Respect for the dead. Yada, yada.

I was just browsing the internet and I found this entry on the Huffington Post blog. Basically, it's a compilation of some, but clearly not all, of the lovely things you said over the years. The Antichrist is a Jew? MLK was insincere? Desmond Tutu is a phony? You were too kind!

With all due respect, sir, I hope you're finding your special place in Hell comfortable. I hear it's lovely this time of year.

Sure, there are plenty of people with nice things to say about you in the week since your passing. I am not one of them.

However, I'm not going to reach into your bag of dirty tricks. I'm not going to say that you were the ruination of the country, although the hundreds of thousands of people who think like you frighten me. When you were still alive, I never wished for your eternal damnation. When I say that I hope you're enjoying Hell I say it, not because I wish to send you there (I'm Jewish, so I don't really believe Hell exists), but because I cannot, for the life of me, think of one good reason that a man so full of hate as you were in life deserves anything better than that in death.

My only wish is that, after some time spent down there, you'd be able to see your wrongs, and come back to tell the world about them. Unfortunately, we all know that that will never be. So at the very least, I hope you soon find yourself being joined by the others whose minds you poisoned against their fellow man.

There is no room in this world for your kind of hate, Jerry. There are bigger--much bigger--battles to be won. But I do hope that you've found room in the next.

Image via New Paltz Journal.