Month: July 2006

Among those with the integrity to see bigotry when it stares him in the face, neoconservative lion, Charles Krauthammer, also deserves props for calling Gibson what he is two years ago. Money quote:

In none of the Gospels does the high priest Caiaphas stand there with his cruel, impassive fellow priests witnessing the scourging. In Gibson’s movie they do. When it comes to the Jews, Gibson deviates from the Gospels — glorying in his artistic vision — time and again. He bends, he stretches, he makes stuff up. And these deviations point overwhelmingly in a single direction — to the villainy and culpability of the Jews.

The most subtle, and most revolting, of these has to my knowledge not been commented upon. In Gibson’s movie, Satan appears four times. Not one of these appearances occurs in the four Gospels. They are pure invention. Twice, this sinister, hooded, androgynous embodiment of evil is found . . . where? Moving among the crowd of Jews. Gibson’s camera follows close up, documentary style, as Satan glides among them, his face popping up among theirs — merging with, indeed, defining the murderous Jewish crowd. After all, a perfect match: Satan’s own people.

And we are now surprised??

A classic column, and worth re-reading in light of recent revelations. Money quote:

Apparently seeking to curry favor, Gibson announced a few weeks ago that he had cut the scene where a Jewish mob yells for the blood of Jesus to descend on the heads of its children (a scene that occurs in only one of the four contradictory Gospels). Gibson lied. The scene is still there, spoken in Aramaic. Only the English subtitle has been removed. Propagandists in other countries will be able to subtitle it any way they like. This is all of a piece with the general moral squalor of his project. Gibson’s producer lied when he said that a pope Gibson despises had endorsed the film. He would not show the movie to anyone who might object in advance. He will not debate any of his critics, and he relies on star-stricken pulp interviewers to feed him soft questions. Now, as the dollars begin to flow from this front-loaded fruit-machine of cynical publicity, he is sobbing about the risks and sacrifices he has made for the Lord. A coward, a bully, a bigmouth, and a queer-basher. Yes, we have been here before. The word is fascism, in case you are wondering, and we don’t have to sit through that movie again.

Props to Power Line’s Scott Hinderaker Johnson for breaking with the Popular Front two years ago and finding "The Passion of the Christ" an anti-Semitic movie when he first saw it. Gibson is a virulent anti-Semite, attracted to insane and gratuitous violence. He is Father Coughlin remade for the 21st Century. But Hinderaker’s best point is one reason this story is still important today – and more important than the MSM has understood. Money quote:

I found myself wondering how this movie would be seen by Arabs and Muslims – the kind of Arabs and Muslims that surround Israel. I think Gibson’s film is crude in ways that would make it popular viewing on Arab television outlets that otherwise specialize in 45-part serializations of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Where am I wrong?

He was not wrong, and that, in part, was the obvious effect of the movie: to revive ancient anti-Semitism, to foment it in the Middle East and to endanger Israel even more. For one of the most repulsive defenses of the movie – that its critics were fomenting anti-Semitism more than Gibson – read this National Review essay by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. This movie was an enormous cultural event and it came from the mind and soul of a vicious anti-Semite, at a time when Israel’s existence is on the line. And yet many Jewish neocons went out of their way to defend it, for the purposes of their alliance of convenience with the Christianist right. Here’s another priceless quote from Lapin:

Surely it is now time to analyze the vitriolic loathing demonstrated by various Jewish groups and their leaders toward Mel Gibson over the past six months. This analysis might help forestall some similar ill-conceived and ill-fated future misadventure on the part of self-anointed Jewish leadership. At the very least it might advance human understanding of destructive group pathologies.

As the whole world knows by now, Mel Gibson, his movie, his father, his church and anything else even remotely associated with Mr. Gibson have been smeared as anti-Semitic. From the immoderate assaults, you might have thought that the target was a thug with a lengthy rap sheet for murdering Jews while yelling "Heil Hitler." From the intensity of the rhetoric you would have thought that from his youth, Gibson had been hurling bricks through synagogue windows. Yet until "The Passion," he was a highly regarded and successful entertainer who went about his business largely ignored by the Jewish community, so why now do they hate him so?

Once Mel Gibson revealed himself to be, like the President, a person of serious religious faith the gloves came off. Mel Gibson has done a major favor for serious faith, both Jewish and Christian, in America. He has made it ‘cool’ to be religious, but in so doing he has unleashed the hatred of secular America against himself personally, against his work, and against his family. God bless him.

"Talking about a new strategy is useless until we get a new team ‚Äî in the Pentagon, in the Administration. These guys have screwed up everything. They haven’t got the credibility to implement anything," – retired Marine Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, in Joe Klein’s grim column on Iraq.

My take on the Iraq meltdown in yesterday’s Sunday Times of London can be read here.

So they deliberately fire rockets from civilian areas in order to provoke Israeli counter-strikes whose civilian deaths can then be deployed through the mass media to intensify the psychological warfare on Israel. That’s a war-crime. But why should be expect any less?

(Photo: Naser Nasser/AP.)

Stan and Kenny Visit Mel. It’s uncanny how Trey Parker and Matt Stone are right about everything.

"I do not understand the accusations of anti-Semitism, for except for Pilate and his soldiers, all of the players are Jewish, the most noble, the flawed, and the corrupt. I do understand the long history of Christian anti-Semitism, and how it perverted the Gospels to its cause, but this film is not part of that shameful legacy. Should anyone try and pervert the movie to that end, there will be millions of Christians condemning such a kidnapping … ‘If the world hates you, you know it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.’ John 15:18-19. These words of Jesus are a guarantee that the maker of The Passion of the Christ is in for a rough go of it, as well as its cast and crew. If anyone knows Mel Gibson, please pass along my thanks," – Hugh Hewitt, one of anti-Semite Mel Gibson’s carefully selected Christianist previewers of "The Passion of the Christ."

If you want to understand what the Bush administration has done to conservatism, listen to the well-meant and sincere agenda of Mike Gerson, former liberal Democrat.

A reader writes:

Just making sure I’ve got this straight:
Involvement in community theater is enough to not just disqualify, but actually remove someone from military service, while a "moral waiver" allows a high-school dropout with a criminal record to enlist in the millitary days after his last arrest.

Look: they may be criminals, but they’re not fags. Is there anything else about the military’s attitude we don’t understand?

Greg Djerejian comments.