Tim Murphy

Reporter

Tim Murphy is a reporter in MoJo's DC bureau. Last summer he logged 22,000 miles while blogging about his cross-country road trip for Mother Jones. His writing has been featured in Slate and the Washington Monthly. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

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The Bond Villains at the Jerry Falwell Museum

—By Tim Murphy

| Wed Jul. 7, 2010 1:03 PM PDT

The Great Books: Liberty U's Barnes & Noble is like any college bookstore anywhere, right down to the overpriced coffee. The books are a little bit different, though (Photo: Tim Murphy).Lynchburg, Virginia—Although a friend in Charlottesville had informed me that Lynchburg might be a nice place for me to check out my first gun shop, the real attraction in town is the campus of Liberty University. Founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the televangelist who once suggested that 9/11 may have been God's punishment for homosexuality (I mean, really, who can say for sure?), it's emerged as one of the nation's most prominent conservative Christian institutions. At the law school, the world's only full-scale replica of the Supreme Court courtroom invites students to think about their futures in public life; last year, the school's president, Jerry Falwell Jr., shut down a Democratic student organization because of the party's position on abortion.

The crown jewel on campus, though, might be the Jerry Falwell Museum, located by the main entrance to the vistors center and perfectly situated for prospective students and their parents to stop in as they wait for a tour. It's kind of awesome. The museum houses not one but two stuffed bears, the smaller a black bear named Gertie that the Reverend's father had wrestled (!!) as a young man, and tucked in a side room reserved for alumni, a 10-foot-tall Kodiak donated by a visiting speaker. You can find the piano that was played at the church the night the Reverend was saved, his wife's wedding dress, and a to-scale replica of the tricked-out car his father used to run liquor during prohibition. One room consists almost entirely of photos of its namesake with people more and less famous than himself. There's Jerry with Evander Holyfield; Jerry with Ted Kennedy; Jerry with the Presidents Bush; Jerry with Franklin Graham; Even, tucked in the corner, a photo of Jerry and the tall scary guy who played Jaws in Moonraker.*

A young woman is there with her parents, waiting for an official school tour to begin. She's currently in college (in North Carolina, I think). "It's a 'Baptist' college, in quotations, because I don't think they talked a lot about God the week I was there," says the mom, matter of factly, to tour guide. "Mom, they did!" the daughter protests. Parents are required by a federal law to say stuff like this at least once on every college tour, I think.

Jerry and Jaws:: You may know Richard Kiel as Bond villain Jaws, or as Mr. Larson in Happy Gilmore. Jerry Falwell knew him as "the guy standing next to me" (Photo: Tim Murphy). Jerry and Jaws: You may know Richard Kiel as Bond villain Jaws, or as Mr. Larson in Happy Gilmore. Jerry Falwell knew him as "the guy standing next to me" (Photo: Tim Murphy).The family leaves and I get to talking to a man named Ryan, a former student who now works at the school. I ask Ryan about Liberty's commencement speaker last spring, Glenn Beck. It wasn't quite Obama at Notre Dame, but, he says, "a lot of people were like 'whooooa—he's Mormon." The elderly man sitting at the desk, who I presume works there but doesn't really talk except for once or twice and even then for never more than five seconds, jumps in at this point: "He's not a Christian," he says, speaking of Beck. Then he goes back to his book.

Ryan doesn't really mind much what Beck is, though. He says that while "about a third" of those in attendence at the ceremony were skeptical going in, once Beck started things off by expressing his admiration for the school, he had the crowd in hand. As he explains it, "I don’t really care whether you're Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, or Christian. I just care about how conservative you are." Needless to say, Glenn Beck passes that test.

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A Sense of Where We Are: Today's Map

—By Tim Murphy

| Tue Jul. 6, 2010 11:19 PM PDT

View Westward Expansion in a larger map

Extreme Presidential Makeover

—By Tim Murphy

| Tue Jul. 6, 2010 10:33 PM PDT

Lancaster, Pennsylvania—Rather than lop off the heads of our failed leaders and shun their names, Americans have an endearing tendency to celebrate their misadventures with schools, highways, cities, and quarries upon quarries worth of marble monuments. And that's what's brought us to Lancaster, and the sprawling estate of our fifteenth president. How do you spin the legacy of a man universally regarded as one of America's worst presidents? If you're Patrick Clarke, director of James Buchanan's Wheatland Estate in Lancaster City, it's simple, really: Talk about his prior work experience. Although Clarke says he doesn't avoid the presidency altogether, they make an effort to place his disastrous one term in the context of a lifetime of public service. It's a bit like a music snob saying, "yeah, I liked their old stuff better." But there's some truth to it: While Buchanan was a terrible president, he was involved (if still terribly) in nearly every major bit of foreign policy during the nation's age of expansion. Plus, Clarke notes, if Buchanan were a little less putrid, no one would have been clamoring for Abraham Lincoln.

Buchanan is noteworthy not just for his innovative style of crisis management, but for the theory that he might have also been our first gay president. Clarke says more than a few tourists have stopped by specifically to pop the is-he-or-isn't-he question: "Some of the tour guides are incensed at the question," Clarke says, "but I tell them, if you want to conclude that James Buchanan was heterosexual, that's fine; if you want to believe that James Buchanan was homosexual, that's fine too." If Clarke has an inclination one way or the other, he doesn't say. "We just don't know," he says. And barring the discovery of, say, the Presidents' Book of Secrets, that's how things will stay. "That's one of the great things about history," he says. "You can just keep on arguing forever." That, and it's full of second chances.

The View From My Windshield: Fires of Centralia

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Jul. 5, 2010 12:29 PM PDT

Signs of Life: Centralia, Pennsylvania—Outside one of the last remaining residential buildings, a sign points to the coal fire that's forced all but of a handful of Centralia's residents to leave the town (Photo: Tim Murphy). Signs of Life: Centralia, Pennsylvania—Outside one of the last remaining residential buildings, a sign points to the coal fire that's forced all but of a handful of Centralia's residents to leave the town (Photo: Tim Murphy).

Centralia, Pennsylvania: "A Foretaste of Hell"

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Jul. 5, 2010 9:40 AM PDT

Centralia, Pennsylvania—As I've mentioned earlier, one of my interests in this trip is reexamining the map—looking at alternative versions of what the atlas of the United States might look like in the past and present. Perhaps nowhere in America is that vision more clearly defined than in Centralia, where, since 1962, an underground coal fire has smudged, if not entirely erased, an entire village from the map. Road to Nowhere: (Photo: Tim Murphy) Road to Nowhere: (Photo: Tim Murphy)

If Centralia looked a bit more bombed out, it might be less jarring. Thick plumes of smoke and dilapidated shotgun houses are in many ways easier to deal with than a disaster you can't really see. But the town's impact lies in its modest hold on all the senses: Smoke wafting out of small vents on the side of a hill; roads that branch off the state highway but lead to nowhere; carbon monoxide; potholes, cooked by the fires below, which feel like Easy-Bake Ovens. And the sulphur. I went to Iceland, once, when I was barely a teenager, and remember the smell of rotten eggs when I took showers or passed by any sort of geothermal activity, but all the rotten eggs in Altoona couldn't accomplish the same level of unease as my 15 minutes in Centralia. It looks, feels, and smells like the day after the death of civilization. Save for Centralia's last nine residents—who have been ordered to leave by the governor—the only places still showing signs of life are, well, dead: Amid the ruin, the town's cemeteries are immaculately maintained, with fresh-cut flowers and American flags for the veterans.

I was struggling to properly articulate my thoughts on the town, when a middle-aged woman, visiting from southeast Arkansas, offered an epitath: "I think this is a foretaste of hell."