On 15-May-2007, Christopher Hitchens on the Anderson Cooper 360 show talking about Reverend Jerry Falwell and his death:
Cooper: Christopher, I’m not sure if you believe in heaven, but, if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell is in it?
Hitchens: No. And I think it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.
Cooper: What is it about him that brings up such vitriol?
Hitchens: The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God’s punishment if they hadn’t got some kind of clerical qualification?
People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. The whole consideration of this—of this horrible little person is offensive to very, very many of us who have some regard for truth and for morality, and who think that ethics do not require that lies be told to children by evil old men, that we’re—we’re not told that people who believe like Falwell will be snatched up into heaven, where I’m glad to see he skipped the rapture, just found on the floor of his office, while the rest of us go to hell.
How dare he say, for example, that the Antichrist is already present amongst us and is an adult male Jew, while all the time, fawning on the worst elements in Israel, with his other hand pumping anti-Semitic innuendoes into American politics, along with his friends Robertson and Graham? All the while encouraging the most extreme theocratic fanatics and maniacs on the West Bank and in Gaza not to give an inch of what he thought of as holy land to the people who already live there, undercutting and ruining every Democrat and secularist in the Jewish state in the name of God?
This is—he’s done us an enormous, enormous disservice by this sort of demagogy.