We were all told that fighting the Iraq war would destroy global alliances, wreck our ability to work with allies and generally render the U.S. a pariah. So how are France and the U.S. cooperating so easily in Haiti? Hmmm.
DON’T BLAME BUSH: For the dismal job situation. It’s far more complicated than Kerry would have you believe. Noam Scheiber is on the case.
44,000 POUNDS: That’s how much mustard gas Libya had accumulated.
THANK GOD FOR KRAUTHAMMER: Charles Krauthammer has never written a dumb column, to my knowledge. Even on emotional subjects such as civil marriage, he brings to the debate a calm reasoning that wins the respect of his opponents as well as his supporters. And that is also why his searing criticism of Mel Gibson’s inflammatory and idiosyncratic version of the Passion is so helpful. I’m tired of people believing that Gibson is representing Catholicism. He isn’t. He is a rebel against Catholicism, specifically the reformed, open, repentant Catholicism of the Second Vatican Council. Gibson doesn’t recognize the authority of the current Pope; he doesn’t recognize the current mass – the central ritual of Catholics across the world. People are mistaken in believing that he merely prefers the Latin mass; he doesn’t. He favors the Tridentine mass, a relic. He believes that all non-Catholics are going to hell, another heresy. He is clearly and palpably anti-Semitic. His movie is an act of aggression against Jews, and, as such, is an act of aggression against Catholicism and the current Pope’s heroic efforts to confront the shameful history of the Church with regard to the Jewish people. Charles notes how Satan walks and lives and breathes among the Jews in the movie. He doesn’t mention that young Jewish children actually turn into demons at one point in the movie, a device that only students of medieval anti-Semitism would notice. In fact, one reason that today’s viewers do not notice the hatred of Jews in the movie is because, mercifuly, they are not familiar with the medieval tropes that signal evil and that Gibson trafficks in. Gibson knows. And he knows how his movie will play in those parts of the world where anti-Semitic tropes are still recognized. Notice I am not accusing people of good faith who have found inspiration in the story portraayed in this movie of being anti-Semitic. I’m sure that many if not almost all of that devition is genuine and not motivated by anything but spiritual hope and reflection. But that cannot disguise the malice that lies beneath. And that Gibson would use the message of Christ to advance it is what makes it doubly unforgivable.
THE YOUNGEST METROSEXUALS: Capitalism strikes again.
The Dish 