It is tempting (if ghoulish) to joke that the Lord must have lifted His veil of protection and smote the Reverend Jerry Falwell today for his 4,000th stupid remark. News like this stirs up some complicated feelings. There are thoughtful people in this world with whom we disagree; there are people who are genuinely good, and who genuinely want the world to be a better place for everyone, but who approach the world’s problems from a direction which the rest of us find cockeyed for whatever reason; and then there are guys like Jerry Falwell.

That doesn’t mean we get a free pass on human decency. A man is dead.

There is a dark, sharp, sticky corner to the soul that not everyone has taped off, a corner that tries to turn some deaths into a cause for celebration. Every once in a while, a bullet will find its way to your Uday Husseins or your al-Zarqawis and a guy in fatigues will go up to a podium and proclaim, “We got ‘im!” and a crowd will respond, “Hooraaaay! Someone died! He probably had some kids!”

I’m not sad that some would-be Batman villain has been prevented from hurting any more innocent people, but I can’t really bring myself to break out the party hats either, catchy though “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead” may be. I’m not upset that the world had to part with Uday Hussein, but I’d much rather he had to live with the consequences of his actions and sit in the mess he made. Every day he’s alive is another chance to work on him, to open his mind, to make him think about his actions and atone for them, or at the very least to make him live in a great world where his way lost.

And that’s the thing. We have forever lost the opportunity to change Jerry Falwell’s mind. He will never stand in front of his congregation and say, “I still think God is great, my brothers and sisters, but I got a lot of the other stuff wrong.” He filled the heads of his flock with a lot of crazy douchebag rambling, and he went to his grave believing every word of it and never set it right. I mourn for that, no matter how tempting it is not to.

Here’s to your speedy repose, Rev. Wherever you’ve gone, I hope it’s more like I imagine it than like you imagined it.