Blue Grass Roots gives the Creation Museum a thorough mocking.

It’s not a purse! It’s a man-bag! Even after the passing of Jerry Falwell, the Tinkster can’t catch a break. The Polish government is investigating the Tinky-Winky and the other Teletubbies for promoting homosexuality.

In comments reminiscent of criticism by the late U.S. evangelist Jerry Falwell, [Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog] was quoted as saying: “I noticed (Tinky Winky) has a lady’s purse, but I didn’t realize he’s a boy.”

“At first I thought the purse would be a burden for this Teletubby … Later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone.”

It’s kind of an annoying graphic, so I won’t put it up on the front page, but for a really immature salute to Jerry Falwell courtesy of the Tinkster, here you go.

Jerry Falwell is Dead. Out of some sense of decorum, I won’t rant against him too much just now, but I have to say that he lost all credibility when he had this to say about the causes of the attacks on 9/11:

The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this. . . . And, I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

Update That didn’t last long. After reading the Carpetbagger Report about some of Falwell’s beliefs, I can’t bring myself to care much about decorum for Mr. Falwell.

Some of the greatest hits:

“I do not believe God hears the prayer of any unredeemed Gentile or Jew.”

The gay oriented Metropolitan Community Churches will “one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven.”

Illegally funneling ministry money to political action committees.

“We must never allow our children to forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours.”

Bankrolled a fake “news” video charging that President Clinton was a drug addict and arranged the murder of political enemies.

“I hope to live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”

The Antichrist prophesied in the Bible is alive today and “of course he’ll be Jewish.”

Tinky Winky is gay.

Global warming is a conspiracy orchestrated by Satan, liberals, and The Weather Channel.

So, tell me this: How does a guy who was obviously batshit insane get all that political power in this country?

The Muncie Star Press has an article entitled Billboards spark Biblical debate about homosexuality. The story has to do with a recent billboard campaign citing a Bible verse and saying, “Jesus affirmed a gay couple.” I’d love to do a long blog post on this, but I don’t have the time at the moment. However, I did want to mention that I love the potential for debate that this brings. My incomplete research suggests that Jesus didn’t have much to say one way or the other about homosexuality. Most of the anti-gay passages of the Bible seem to come from older texts that are routinely ignored on other subjects — for example, Leviticus and its dietary commandments, endorsement of slavery, and the like.

If this kind of thing gets traction, I think what it can do is put forward the case that the Bible really isn’t a solid foundation on which to base an anti-gay viewpoint. If those who are against gays want to persist, they’ll have to come up with something more convincing. At least that’s my hope. My suspicion is that reason and Bible quotations won’t make a difference. Some people just have an emotional need to dislike The Other, and rationality has nothing to do with it.

Atrios has a post up with respect to Pat Tillman, the football player who left the NFL to enlist in the U.S. Army in 2002 and was later killed. His story has remained in the news because he was originally said to have been killed by our enemies in Afghanistan. Later investigations revealed this to be false; that he had in fact been killed by friendly fire. This is a war, accidents happen, so Tillman’s death by friendly fire was regrettable but not hugely remarkable in the scheme of things except that the erroneous initial reporting seems to be of a piece with other misinformation that has come out of the executive branch at one time or another.

That’s the short version, and that’s why, when I see that a story is about Pat Tillman, I expect the story to have something to do with either the sacrifice he made as a well-paid NFL player to enlist and fight for his country or with how the Bush administration and/or the military got his story wrong in service of their propoganda efforts. But the Atrios story linked above is not about that.

Rather, it links to and quotes an ESPN story where Pat’s mother, Mary Tillman, is interviewed as is Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich. Kauzlarich apparently made some of the decisions concerning Tillman’s death and its aftermath and was also the person who conducted the first investigation into his death. Kauzlarich says that other soldiers have been killed by friendly fire and their parents just accept it. Asked why the Tillmans are different, he suggested they have the money and the political connections to keep it going. Oh yeah, and they’re not Christians. – — Buh?

“But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide, and the parents have basically said, ‘OK, it was an unfortunate accident.’ And they let it go. So this is — I don’t know, these people have a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs.”

In a transcript of his interview with Brig. Gen. Gary Jones during a November 2004 investigation, Kauzlarich said he’d learned Kevin Tillman, Pat’s brother and fellow Army Ranger who was a part of the battle the night Pat Tillman died, objected to the presence of a chaplain and the saying of prayers during a repatriation ceremony in Germany before his brother’s body was returned to the United States.

Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family’s unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.

In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: “When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.”

Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans’ religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, “I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know.”

Asked what might finally placate the family, Kauzlarich said, “You know what? I don’t think anything will make them happy, quite honestly. I don’t know. Maybe they want to see somebody’s head on a platter. But will that really make them happy? No, because they can’t bring their son back.”

. . .

“Well, this guy makes disparaging remarks about the fact that we’re not Christians, and the reason that we can’t put Pat to rest is because we’re not Christians,” Mary Tillman, Pat’s mother, said in an interview with ESPN.com. Mary Tillman casts the family as spiritual, though she said it does not believe in many of the fundamental aspects of organized religion.

“Oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that this whole thing is shady,” she said sarcastically, “But it is because we are not Christians.”

After a pause, her voice full with emotion, she added, “Pat may not have been what you call a Christian. He was about the best person I ever knew. I mean, he was just a good guy. He didn’t lie. He was very honest. He was very generous. He was very humble. I mean, he had an ego, but it was a healthy ego. It is like, everything those [people] are, he wasn’t.”

This is quite a twist. I never expected Pat Tillman’s story to get dragged into the culture wars. Tillman was killed, apparently because there were some leadership mistakes made in the operation he was in. Unfortunate, and someone probably deserved a reprimand, but it’s war, and mistakes happen and people get killed. A plain old cover-up where an enlisted man gets scapegoated so the officers could walk probably would have sufficed. But, no. They got greedy. They wanted to use Tillman as a heroic symbol — the All-American boy who walked away from riches to fight for his country until he died heroically chasing enemy Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. Superiors who knew that no such battle occurred nonetheless approved his Purple Heart, Silver Star, and posthumous promotion.

But, it’s not all that causing the Tillman’s to want more information about their son. Nope, it’s because they’re dirty atheists. If they’d only accept Jesus, they wouldn’t be so uptight about getting lied to about their son’s cause of death.

Good lord.