http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0705/15/acd.01.html
COOPER: Author and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens is about as
far from Jerry Falwell in his beliefs as one could get. Christian
fundamentalists are a major target of his new book, "God Is Not Great:
How Religion Poisons Everything." He joins me now from Raleigh, North
Carolina.
Christopher, I'm not sure if you believe in heaven, but, if you do, do
you think Jerry Falwell is in it?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "VANITY FAIR": 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 they talk to children like this? How dare they raise money from
credulous people on their huckster-like (INAUDIBLE) radio stations, and
fly around in private jets, as he did, giggling and sniggering all the
time at what he was getting away with?
Do you get an idea now of what I mean to say?
COOPER: Yes, no, I think -- I think you're making yourself very clear.
I mean, I...
(CROSSTALK)
HITCHENS: How dare he say, for example, that the Antichrist is already
present among 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?
COOPER: And, yet, there are...
(CROSSTALK)
HITCHENS: ... encouraging -- encouraging -- 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 was holy land to the people who already
live there, undercutting and ruining every democratic and secularist in
the Jewish state in the name of God?
(CROSSTALK)
HITCHENS: This is -- this is -- he's done us an enormous, enormous
disservice by this sort of demagogy.
COOPER: What do you think it says about America that -- and politics in
America, that he was so successful in mobilizing huge swathes of the
country to come out and vote?
HITCHENS: I'm not certain at all that he did deserve this reputation.
And I... COOPER: You don't think he does?
HITCHENS: Well, I'm not certain that he was a mobilizer. He certainly
hoped to be one.
Well, the fact is that the country suffers, to a considerable extent,
from paying too much, by way of compliment, to anyone who can describe
themselves as a person of faith, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Chaucerian
frauds, people who are simply pickpockets, who -- and frauds -- who prey
on the gullible and...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Do you believe he believed what he spoke?
HITCHENS: Of course not. He woke up every morning, as I say, pinching
his chubby little flanks and thinking, I have got away with it again.
COOPER: You think he was a complete fraud, really?
HITCHENS: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You don't believe that, I mean, in his reading of the Bible, you
don't think he was sincere in his -- whether you agree or not with his
reading of the Bible, you don't think he was sincere in what he spoke?
HITCHENS: No. I think he was a conscious charlatan and bully and fraud.
And I think, if he read the Bible at all -- and I would doubt that he
could actually read any long book of -- at all -- that he did so only in
the most hucksterish, as we say, Bible-pounding way.
I'm going to repeat what I said before about the Israeli question. It's
very important. Jerry Falwell kept saying to his own crowd, yes, you
have got to like the Jews, because they can make more money in 10
minutes than you can make in a lifetime. He was always full, as his
friends Robertson and Graham are and were, of anti- Semitic innuendo.
Yet, in the most base and hypocritical way, he encouraged the worst
elements among Jewry. He got Menachem Begin to give him the Jabotinsky
Medal, celebrating an alliance between Christian fundamentalism and
Jewish fanaticism that has ruined the chances for peace in the Middle
East.
Lots of people are going to die and are already leading miserable lives
because of the nonsense preached by this man, and because of the absurd
way that we credit anyone who can say they're a person of faith.
Look, the president endangers us this way. He meets a KGB thug like
Vladimir Putin, and, because he is wearing a crucifix around his neck,
says, I'm dealing with a man of faith. He's a man of goodwill.
Look what Putin has done to American and European interests lately. What
has the president said to take back this absurd remark? It's time to
stop saying that, because someone preaches credulity and credulousness,
and claims it as a matter of faith, that we should respect them.
The whole life of Falwell shows this is an actual danger to democracy,
to culture, to civilization. That's what my book is all about.
COOPER: The book is "God Is Not Great."
Christopher Hitchens, appreciate you being on the program.
HITCHENS: Thanks for having me.
--
Devil's Advocate
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