" [ Falwell's remarks are ] the most abominable thing I've ever heard. ... It makes you wonder if [ Falwell and Robertson are ] worshipping the same God as the people who bombed the Trade Center and the Pentagon." ... Newsman Walter Cronkite, 84, to TV Guide.
"Now that the Reverend Jerry Falwell has apologized for his ignorant misapplication of Christian thought, we can reflect on one or two questions lying about in the rubble. What Jerry Falwell said on the 700 Club program was that the sins of the nation incurred the wrath of God. Pat Robertson agreed. ... What happened, Falwell elucidated, was not a direct aggression engineered by God, but the forfeit of God's special protection. That refinement didn't do it. So finally Mr. Falwell said that his remarks were 'insensitive, uncalled for at the time, and unnecessary.' ... Christian teaching is not irrelevant, simply because we dismiss as preposterous the notion that, on September 11, God was the hijackers' co-pilot. God does not shield his creatures from the malevolent exercise of free will." ... William Buckley in the National Review.
"'Today we are all Israelis.' Is this the closest analogy to the way we live now: shaken by terror, reeling from loss, amazed by hatred, wondering desperately if ours are to be the next deaths? No. I remember reading, almost 20 years ago on another airliner, the first New York Times article about GRID, or gay-related immunological disorder: the only term they had, in those days, for AIDS. That plane, unlike the doomed jets two weeks ago, arrived safely. But the world in which it landed...the 1980's world of New York, of gay men, of the arts...was comparably devastated. With equal surgical precision, the plague slipped through America's proud medical-industrial defenses to slay thousands. I was startled and moved, then, after the recent disaster to see on so many senators' lapels the AIDS ribbon...that single loop of red that was for years our lone badge of grief...transformed into a tricolor insignia of everything America lost on Sept. 11. The Israeli analogy is true and apt. But what I thought that Tuesday morning was, 'We are all AIDS sufferers now.'" ... John Corigliano, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of concert and film music, in The New York Times Sept. 23.
"But it has taken the most perverted wing-nut of them all, the right-wing figure Andrew Sullivan, to lead them to the place where we knew they were all headed all along...and to revive the 'stab-in-the-back' hate perfected by the Nazis in the 1920's and 1930's Sullivan blames September 11 on...yes, you guessed it...Bill Clinton. Sullivan's accusatory piece, published in Sunday's Times of London, is a farrago of lies, distortions, and right-wing paranoia, all of it easily exposed as false. While it attempts to raise questions about Clinton's performance, Sullivan's drivel actually raises questions only about Andrew's loyalty to America and the fight against terrorism. ... Bill Clinton tried his best to kill Osama bin Laden. He poured time, money, and resources into the task. All the while, Andrew Sullivan and his creepy, fascistic G.O.P friends were mocking Clinton for trying to avoid the REAL public business, which was Ken Starr's inquisition. And now, Sullivan has the gall to say that Clinton did nothing." ... MediaWhoresOnline.com .
"As for the F.B.I....well we know that the F.B.I. under Louis Freeh was more than happy to undertake dirty-tricks operations, so long as they were directed against Bill Clinton. If Freeh had expended half the energy against bin Laden as he did about Monica Lewinsky, etc., who knows how better prepared we might have been?" ... MediaWhoresOnline.com .
"The Taliban are always in the news, forcing Hindus to wear yellow and hounding Christians and such, not because Afghanistan particularly interests Americans...it is small, poor, and far away ...but because we enjoy a burst of ego gratification at such stories. 'Look at these people,' we tisk-tisk, 'chasing women with sticks. How medieval.' Then we do exactly the same thing, in our own way. Grab a Taliban off the street and ask why women shouldn't work or be educated and he will patiently explain to you that women who work are whores, and would you want your wife or sister to be a whore? Makes all the sense in the world to him. Go to Florida and ask U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King why gays can't adopt children and he will say...actually, he did say, Thursday... that there is insufficient evidence that 'homosexual families are equivalently stable, are able to provide proper gender identification or are no more socially stigmatizing than married heterosexual families.'" ... Columnist Neil Steinberg in the Sept. 2 Chicago Sun-Times.
