Let’s Pretend Jerry Falwell Suffers From Horrible Nightmares

Summertime inspires laziness, so I apologize for the dearth in reporting. It’s not that the offices here have gone quiet, or that we’re on vacation, or so and so is on assignment. We’ve just been drinking more, which tends to gum up the works in our spectacularly intrepid reporting machine. Sometimes you sit down with a good cheeseburger and a crisp beer as you might on any other Saturday, but the next thing you know you haven’t moved a limb in more than a week, you’re 10 pounds heavier, and there’s a bangin’ smell coming from your pants. You know, mentally. And while that rank, pig-like odor was wafting up from my mind’s waistline last week, while I was possessed by images of pink skin wiggling in its own shit, I thought of Jerry Falwell.

Falwell may try his best to act like a hog, but we know there’s a human being somewhere within those big fleshy folds…a person with feelings, desires, hopes, and dreams. Of course, it stands to reason that where there are dreams there must also be nightmares—perhaps even disturbing psychedelic torture sessions harder than any purple Jesus could ever hope to inflict. So what’s the stuff of Falwell’s nightmares? Here are our best guesses.

• In a dream of heaven, the first person Falwell sees is Larry Flynt.

• Falwell dreams he is paralyzed, stuck in a dingy hospital room. Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky are his nurses and only visitors. Both wear cut-off jean shorts and revealing “Moral Majority” half-tees. Monica asks incessantly if he needs a sponge bath, or “what Bill got.” Hillary stands in the corner holding a thin, clear tube. She snaps two latex gloves over her hands and Falwell wakes mumbling, “Mother? Mother?”

• Falwell is visited by an angel sent by the Lord, explaining that God would like to speak with the old preacher before sunrise. The angel disappears while relief washes over Falwell, and he senses a peace like none he’s ever felt. He prays silently and waits for the Lord’s appearance. Just before dawn Falwell feels radiant warmth surround him in a beam of light. He becomes almost giddy and humbly asks, “Lord, are you there?” At the exact instant Falwell finishes speaking, God begins berating him viciously in Arabic. Falwell wakes having wet himself.

• This recurring nightmare starts innocently enough: Falwell is broadcasting with Pat Robertson on television, explaining that what liberals call social tolerance is in fact the primary cause of developmental disabilities in children. As Falwell preaches passionately to the camera, he becomes aware that he has been drooling profusely for some time. Soaked in his own saliva and humiliated, Falwell frantically searches the studio for a towel. He finds nothing, and as he begins to panic a small boy in a propeller beanie approaches, points to Robertson and says, “Pat is your very good friend, Mr. Preacher.” Falwell notices that Elvis’s “Love Me Tender” has begun to play through his earpiece. He feels a tapping on his shoulder and turns to see Robertson standing close by. Robertson smiles eerily and puts his tongue in Falwell’s mouth. Falwell wakes up screaming.

• It’s a nasty hot summer day in New York City. Falwell finds himself trapped with three unmarried pregnant women in the back seat of a taxi cab, smack in the middle of a traffic jam. The women are practically sitting on top of him and each smells of ethnic food he doesn’t recognize. He feels a bit dizzy. He asks for someone to crack a window but no one moves. Nausea sets in. Then the women give birth nonchalantly, easy as combing their hair, and the babies paw their way onto Falwell’s lap. They dig into his pockets to eat whatever spare change they can find. Jim Bakker is in the driver’s seat; with a big grin he spins around to hand Falwell three cigars. Falwell doesn’t sleep again for days.