Great Eulogies: Tinky Winky Remembers Jerry Falwell

While watching the eulogies this weekend, I couldn't help but think about the greatest eulogy I've ever heard: Tinky Winky's eulogy of Dr. Jerry Falwell. I want to share it with those of you who may have missed it before.
Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Jerry Falwell saved me.

I didn't know I needed saving at the time. I had a top-rated television series, money coming out the wazoo, and the ability to show sizzling-hot porn on a video monitor I had mounted in my stomach. You can't imagine how popular that made me with the guys. Yes, I said guys. You see, my name is Tinky Winky, the formerly-purple teletubby, and I am a recovering homosexual.

I hadn't meant to become a friend of Dorthy's (or actually Dora's in my case). I didn't go looking for the demon of homosexuality; I was just trying to find a party.

You see, Dipsy, Po, the Sun Baby and I were attending our first children's programing convention. We were just kids then really, but we were cocky kids with a new, fantastically successful television show and we were willing to try anything. And try everything we did. I don't think Dipsy showed up for a single autograph session. He was far too busy talking any of a number of the ever present groupies into reorienting his antenna. Po and the Sun Baby might as well have ducked the signings too, Lord knows they were way too fucked up on smack to autograph photos.

Me, I was constantly hungover from all the parties the other stars were throwing. It was at one of those parties I first heard sodom's siren call.

It started out innocently enough. I ran into Dora the Explorer and Velma from Scoobie Doo in the hotel bar. I tried to make small talk, hoping to pick one of them up, but they didn't seem interested until I showed them I could tune-in the College World Series of Women's Softball on my stomach--it's an old pick-up trick I must have used a thousand times. It seemed to work. They invited me to come up to their suite later to party.

Man, was I excited. A few months earlier, I was just plain old Tinky Winky, a lonely loaner TV at Jim's Television Repair in Elwood, Utah and now, here I was in a fancy hotel room in New York, polishing my picture tube in preparation for what I thought would be a threesome with Velma from Scooby Doo and Dora the Explorer. Unfortunately, I was sadly mistaken.

I tried to hide my disappointment when I entered the suite. Dora and Velma were not alone. The place was packed with stars, old and new. Bert and Ernie were there, trying to convince Squidward to join them in some mysterious activity. Josie was in the corner grooming one of the Pussycats. Spongebob Squarepants was grooving with Jughead. And Race Bannon from Jonny Quest was poking a finger into He-Man's chest as Dr. Benton Quest tearfully tried to intervene.

Suddenly, I felt a hand grabbing my ass, and turning around, hoping to see Velma or Dora, I was face to face with Bob the Builder, who quickly leaned forward and slipped me some tongue. I was surprised at first, then angry for a brief moment, and finally very excited as I found myself hungrily returning Bob's attention by twisting his screwdriver. Everything's a blur after that, except for the part that involved the Snuffleupagus and felching--you never forget something like that--but of one thing I was certain, I had been recruited into their lifestyle.

I lived that way secretly for years, always worried that Dipsy would learn about my dalliances and use that knowledge to move up to becoming the Teletubby who dances around the bunnies. Or worse yet, Po would wake up early out of his opiate-induced haze and realize why his mouth always tasted funny in the morning.

Then Jerry Falwell saw my purse. I'm surprised he was the first to notice it. I'd been flaunting it for over a year, perversely taking pleasure from the adrenaline buzz I received by risking exposure so blatantly. Of course he immediately went to press with the news, announcing it in the same magazine he used to expose the Bill Clinton's bloody, cocaine-fueled, rampage through Mena, Arkansas, during which he personally killed over 730 people with a pointed stick and an anvil.

Angry, I blackmailed the Celery Guy from the vegi-tales into giving me Falwells number and I called him (Oh the stories i could tell about celeryboy, the tomato, and Gumby's parties, but that's for another time; let's just say there's a reason Gumby's pony is called "Pokey"). Of course, I was very angry at Falwell, and I laid into him right away. Rev. Jerry didn't interrupt. He let me get it all out, then, he said the following words to me:

"Tinky, Jesus loves you. That's why he's going to have you tortured in Hell for all eternity for wanting to share your life with another man."

I had never heard of anyone loving someone so completely like that until then--this was before President Bush began sharing his love with brown people--and I was very touched by it. The rest of the call was very pleasant after that. We discussed God, gladiator movies, what I was wearing at that moment, etc. You know. We just talked about everything. Finally, he ended the call by asking me if I was willing to undergo reparative therapy and become an ex-gay for Jesus. I immediately answered yes, and here I am today, 756 aversion-therapy-prescribed electrical shocks to my naughty bits later, happy, Christain, ex-Gay, and waiting for the treatment's side effects to wear off so I can smile. Oh, and I'm no longer purple. I've died my fur a more heterosexual shade of fuchsia.

I owe all that to Jerry Falwell. I'll miss him.