Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Falwell & Tinky Winky   [Jonah Goldberg]

Can I just make one small point that has always bothered me? Last night during NBC's coverage of Falwell's life they recycled the whole Falwell-thinks-Tinky-Winky-is-gay thing. Falwell surely made a mistake launching that controversy the way he did. And, personally, I have no knowledge about what Tinky Winky does after hours. But I always thought that Falwell got a gad rap from the press on all of that (indeed, I wrote about it in my old, long forgotten,  column for Brill's Content). The liberal media loves — loves! — casting evangelicals as sexually hung up prudes. It should not detract from the basic unfairness of this bias to also concede that some evangelical leaders have supplied their enemies with ample ammo in this regard.

Nonetheless, the coverage at the time made it seem like Falwell watched the Teletubbies a few times, laid eyes on Tinky Winky and said "Holy Brokeback Candy Mountain! That one is a friend of Dorothy!" A spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign proclaimed "Jerry Falwell's paranoia about gay people has reached a new and ludicrous high-water mark." Joan Garr, of GLAAD, told NBC nightly news, “It's hard to say I'm offended and to keep a straight face at the same time.”

The problem with all of this was that Falwell didn't  get the idea from watching the show, he got the idea from gay people. Tinky-Winky was a campy icon of gay clubbers in London and New York long before Falwell even knew who Mr.(?) Winky was. At least according to sources such as the Washington Post. Falwell's operation was always on  the lookout for dangerous intersections of gays and kids and clearly picked up on the story. It's fine to fault him for doing that, if that's how you come down on such questions. But instead, everyone pretended that Falwell had come up with this thing all on his own. 

05/16 11:56 AMShare