Does Gibson deserve the 'Passion' backlash? (the answer is "YES")

Boston Globe ^ | 2.16.04 | Cathy Young

[rface]

MEL GIBSON'S soon-to-be-released film "The Passion of the Christ" -- hailed by some as a powerful account of the last hours of Jesus' life, decried by others as an inflammatory screed with anti-Semitic overtones -- has become a lightning rod in the culture wars. The film's conservative defenders have charged that the criticism is driven by liberal fears of religion's growing influence on society. The critics charge that conservatives are using the issue to whip up a hysteria about alleged persecution of religion. Recently, the debate shifted to another inflammatory issue: Holocaust denial and comparisons between the Holocaust and other atrocities.

[Old Professer]

Quite a bump in the road toward a Post-Christian society, isn't it?

[Antoninus]

All things considered, the Germans got off easy.

You do know what the Russians did to the ethnic Germans in East Prussia and other germanic enclaves throughout Eastern Europe in 1944-46, don't you? If not, look it up.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

She obviously believes other people's suffering has less significance. Apparently, they are not worth mentioning.

[Antoninus]

So other than the deaths, the loss of real estate, all personal possessions, personal liberty and possibly virtue, the beatings, the starvation, the family separation, the poverty and illness - yes, my German family got off pretty easy.

This story is far from unique. It's estimated that some 4-5 million German civilians were killed during the Russian push into Germany in '44-'45. But nobody cares about them. After all, since they were Germans, they MUST have been guilty of something.

[Antoninus]

Excellent. In the articles I read in my local Jewish paper, people like Foxman of the ADL DID see the film and DID pass judgement on what it might do.

So did Michael Medved. Have you read his comments? Or is he "not Jewish enough" because he doesn't run the ADL?

[ApesForEvolution]

I can't wait to see the movie.

[Ichneumon]

[rface:] Cathy Young's career is based upon "Witch Hunts"

[OpusatFR:] Whatever happened to the left's mantra, "If you don't like it, don't watch?"

[11th Earl of Mar:] "W-itch" I think you misspelled the word.

[Caipirabob] How could a Christian such as myself forget my place in Ms. Young's view of the world?

[DallasMike:] Who is this twit? Her column looks like it was written by a sixth-grader

[Chris Talk:] She would watch gladly as Christians were sawn into and cast into boiling oil. Yet she is SO, SO politically correct if some favored minority is even "offended."

[LisaMalia:] Note to liberal Hollywood, and the liberal press writing this stuff...you should be afraid, be very afraid.

[johnny7:] Cathy is an angry socialist as full of the aggressive zeal possessed by any loyal Trotskyite.

[CWW:] This article is a sad example of what Satan does to divide Christians and Jews.

[dfwgator:] Of course Cathy saw nothing controversial about "The Last Temptation of Christ" I bet.

[kitkat:] This writer is a people-divider.

[Aquinasfan:] These people are beneath contempt.

[jscd3:] Or have I correctly summed up this rancid dingbat's position?

[ DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet:] She obviously believes other people's suffering has less significance.

[WV Mountain Mama:] Yet, she probably stood up for Clinton when he said it depends on what is is, and oral sex is not sex, etc, etc. Funny how the left thinks.

[fortunecookie:] Well, I could make a joke about her hovering around a cauldron, but that wouldn't be nice.

[verity:] The media is the enemy.

[Freedom4US:] It's a beautiful thing, when lying leftists are fully exposed.

[Reactionary:] I think that what we would do well to understand is that the political Left has its own mythology and that mythology concerning Western civilization is in conflict with Gibson's Passion of Christ.

[jscd3:] Simply having a non-PC opinion is, by definition, intolerant, and, consequently, everything that follows is always "your fault" [...] Probably drive the author of this nonsense out of the offices of Reason magazine with a rope whip because of her mendacity...

[Charles Martel:] Cathy, you ignorant slut...

[TheGeezer:] She says "yes, but..." to the condemnation of human suffering if the government responsible for such massive crimes just happens to be run by communist socialists rather than national socialists.

[beaversmom:] I wonder how much PC Cathy Young supports modern day Jews getting blown up by modern day crazies?!?

My my... There are certainly a lot of Freepers willing to confidently jump to conclusions about the author being a "rancid" "liberal", "liar", "PC", "leftist", "socialist", "twit", "Trotskyite", "*itch", "people-divider", "slut", engaging in a "witch hunt" and abetting "Satan", who wishes to feed Christians to lions...

I'd like to ask everyone whether the posts quoted above sound very Christian. If nothing else, there are certainly a lot of cast stones. And the tone is downright ugly.

Unlike a lot of folks here, I actually bothered to learn a bit more about the author instead of mistaking my presumptions for reality.

Check out these excerpts of some other essays by the same author and ask yourself whether some folks might have been a bit too hasty in condemning her as a "PC leftist liberal socialist Trotskyite bitch twit slut":

Windbags of War: Left-wing McCarthyism on campus

He then went on to state that "it is understandable why America was targeted" and that "when we enter [Third World] countries to rape the land of its resources and leave it barren, we are being watched and we are being judged." If anything, such cognitive dissonance is even scarier than outright support for terrorism. There is a world of difference between questioning government policies, even in wartime, and questioning America’s moral right to self-defense. Too often, what passes for dissent in academe today is much closer to self-hatred. [...] At several schools, including Central Michigan University and Florida Gulf Coast University, administrators banned the display of American flags, pro-war posters, and stickers saying "Proud to Be an American" on the grounds that foreign students might be offended. [...] ...it seems clear that campus political correctness, 1990s-style, is alive and well today. Even after the attacks on America, this left-wing brand of McCarthyism has lost none of its self-righteousness or intolerance.

Intellectual Warfare: Pseudo-intellectuals and pseudo-populists duke it out.

One could also note that Miller unintentionally validates Ailes’ remark about the smugness of liberal elites when he jeers at the "half-educated viewers" of Fox News. And he himself acknowledges that the right’s anti-academic prejudice does not extend to conservative academics, from Henry Kissinger to Condoleeza Rice. In Miller’s view, of course, these academics are not true intellectuals but mere cheerleaders for the powers that be. Indeed, it seems that for him the only legitimate intellectuals are on the left. [...] Presumably, scholars who blame radical Islamic terrorism on certain aspects of modern Muslim culture -- the historian Bernard Lewis, for example -- are to be counted among the dull-witted multitudes. [...] It is a startling indictment of the so-called liberal elites that Al Gore is their idea of an intellectual. As New York Observer columnist Ron Rosenbaum (a Democrat) wrote just before the 2000 election, in a scathing essay deconstructing Gore’s pretentious, vapid ramblings, "If George W. Bush is a lightweight, Al Gore is a deep lightweight: deep on the surface, profoundly shallow down below....Al Gore is the Emperor’s New Brain."

Consciousness Raising 101: Inside the gender studies classroom

For most students, the "myth-debunking" critique of orthodox feminism -- the exposés of bogus and manipulated facts and statistics -- proved powerful and eye-opening. [...] The women, including those most inclined to identify with feminist views, were perhaps most receptive to the argument that treating women as perpetual victims becomes a self-fulfilling, infantilizing prophecy. Thus, Roiphe’s scathing indictment of "rape crisis feminism," with its dogma that women are imperiled by male brutes at every turn and that verbal pressure is just as bad as physical violence, was largely well-received... [...] Even more positive was the reaction to the readings from Daphne Patai’s Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism, which examines the politics of the "sexual harassment industry." Not one student favored ridding the workplace or the classroom of all sexual innuendo, bawdy humor, and other expressions of sexuality, and most shared Patai’s view that it’s impossible to eliminate all unwanted sexual attention without intolerably policing the welcome kind. [...] This year, right on the heels of Farrell, we read excerpts from Peggy Orenstein’s book Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World, which supported some of Farrell’s claims: specifically, that many young women want to enjoy the fruits of equality but also see it as their prerogative to be financially supported if they want to give up, suspend, or scale down their careers when they have families, and that as a result women today have much more flexible options than men. [...] I can only hope that our lessons had some lasting effects.

The Mommy Tax: Is motherhood a boon or a burden for women today?

While Crittenden takes a swipe at our national value of "pursuit of happiness through the pursuit of money," the underlying assumption in The Price of Motherhood is that pay and career status are the only rewards that matter. Yet today's semi-traditional roles often afford women not only greater opportunities (compared to men) to be close to their children, but greater opportunities for more fulfilling if less lucrative work. [...] Crittenden pays lip service to equal parenting, but most of the time her attitude toward fathers ranges between dismissive and venomous. She explicitly suggests that men don't love their children as much as women do. While grudgingly admitting that "two parents are better than one," she also speculates that children may often be better off in female-headed families where "no man is able to challenge maternal priorities," since women are supposedly more inclined to spend resources on the children and not on their selfish needs. [...] True gender equality would mean recognizing that both parents are equally responsible for -- and equally important to -- their children, however they decide to divide their responsibilities. Instead, Crit-tenden believes that "society" should take responsibility for children so that women can have it all. What she proposes is entitlement masquerading as rights, female chauvinism posing as anti-sexism, and a vast expansion of government power under the guise of empowering women.

Soviet Reunion: Russia's future is looking frighteningly like its past

However, on two points, Yeltsin and his administration deserve whatever credit they can get. They genuinely respected freedom of the press, and they explicitly treated the rise of democracy in Russia as a clean break with the country's communist past. They may not have gone nearly as far as many dissidents and pro-democracy activists wanted; no program similar to de-Nazification in post-World War II Germany was enacted, and even the mummified Lenin was allowed to rest in his mausoleum on Red Square. Yet the repudiation of the Soviet legacy was fairly unambiguous. [...] When it comes to economic reform, moreover, Putin the authoritarian may deserve better grades than Yeltsin the democrat. Under Putin's administration, taxes have been cut and the tax code simplified. After a decade of foot-dragging, it looks like private ownership of land may at last be legalized. [...] Yet while socialism is not the part of the Soviet legacy that Putin and his supporters seek to reclaim, a powerful state most certainly is. In Moscow Times last March, Russian commentator Evgenia Albats wrote that Putin's ideology is "one of extreme statism pragmatically married to a market economy." The word for that is fascism. And under a statist regime in which the rights and freedoms of the individual are viewed as secondary, the market economy will always remain, to some extent, at the whim of whoever happens to be in charge of the state. [...] Indeed, perhaps the real message of the current events in Russia is that moral issues take precedence over economic ones after all. Those among the Russian democrats who said that the most important task facing the country was an honest accounting and repentance for the crimes of communism may have been right. If this task had been tackled, Russia could not have ended up with an ostensibly "democratic" government that sees itself as an almost-proud heir to the Soviet state.

One Nation, Many Gods

Does the Supreme Court’s ruling on school vouchers violate this principle of neutrality? No. Under voucher programs, the government is not establishing religious schools, nor is it funding religious schools in preference to secular ones. It is giving stipends to parents who can then send their children to any private school, religious or secular. To exclude religious schools from these programs, as some liberals propose, would not be neutral -- it would be a form of active discrimination against religion. Some people argue that their tax money shouldn’t be used to support schools that teach religious doctrines they find objectionable. But secular private schools -- and, more important, public schools -- teach plenty of things to which some taxpayers object, from the acceptability of non-marital sexual relationships to a quasi-religious environmentalism. Right now, parents who are happy with secular schooling can have it for free while those who want religious schooling have to pay tuition on top of their school taxes. The voucher ruling allows parents to choose a secular or religious education for their children on an equal basis.

The Feminist West

With Islamic fundamentalists making war on the West, the left’s schizoid relationship to feminism and multiculturalism has come into full view. If one regards respect for women’s rights as good, it’s very difficult to maintain the notion that all cultures are morally equal, considering that the United States is at war with what may be, in the words of The Village Voice, "the most misogynistic regime in history." Compared to Afghanistan under the Taliban, where women are forbidden to work or learn and have been subjected to an especially draconian dress code, the Ayatollah’s Iran is a feminist utopia. (Indeed, the Taliban’s treatment of women has been so horrendous as to obscure its very real atrocities against large numbers of men.) Of course, the U.S. did not go to war in Afghanistan to liberate the women. Still, one might assume that there would be little if any doubt as to where feminist sympathies would lie. In some cases, however, the assumption would be wrong. [...] After years of male-bashing, it is good to see some appreciation for male heroism, and even for the fact that traditional machismo always included more than brute force -- that physical strength and courage could be deployed toward the "nurturing" goals of protection and rescue. [...] But perhaps there is another gender-related message to be gleaned from the attack on America. However much we would like to regard women’s liberation as a natural right, it is the product and achievement of a complex, advanced civilization. Recent events remind us that this civilization is fragile, and that its enemies are hostile to freedom for anyone -- but especially women. Feminists, perhaps more than anyone else, should realize that the West is worth defending.

These passages would not be at all out of place in a Mark Steyn column, or Ann Coulter editorial (were it not for the fact that Young is less catty).

Clearly, many Freepers on this thread owe Cathy Young an apology for making simple-minded, vicious, incorrect accusations about her politics, her beliefs, and her character.

Most days I am proud to be a Freeper. Today is not one of them.

[Antoninus]

For the satire impaired, I am suggesting that showing The Passion will not result in a sudden wave of hordes of rioting anti-semites. Unless, that is, Mel has hired Al Sharpton to run the films distribution...

I'll bet you anything that a few synagogues are in fact burned, but that the culprits are never apprehended....

[jscd3]

I'll bet you anything that a few synagogues are in fact burned, but that the culprits are never apprehended....

Only Black synagogues in the South...

[h.a. cherev]

Perhaps you should give yourself the opportunity to use your own judgement?

Thank you, but no. The subject matter doesn't interest me and I've heard there's a great deal of violence portrayed in a realistic manner. I wouldn't pay to see that even if the subject did interest me.

Why assume either? Eiither you repsect his perspective or you don't. Just declare either way.

I don't.

You really need to examine your own conscience and understand why you make such narrow statements before questioning the consciences of others, wouldn't you think?

I'm sorry you think I've made narrow statements. I thought I asked questions.

I think your fears are unfounded and misguided but, admittedly, I would take them more seriously if they were based in a viewing of the movie rather than your preconceived notions of rampant anti-semitism at the hands of Gibson and his movie. I presume you understand why.

Where did I ever say that Gibson's movie was anti-Semitic? I understand your misconception, however.

My grandchildren were afraid of the dark closet until I took them in there and shut out the light. They no longer fear what is not there.

I've read historical accounts of the results of Passion Plays conducted in Europe over the centuries. I don't fear what is not there.

I really do only speak for myself. There is nothing to fear from Christ or ture followers of Christ. Of that I can assure you.

Hopefully, you are correct.

[Antoninus]

Only Black synagogues in the South...

Exactly. And the media will be falling all over themselves to link these acts to The Passion somehow.

[jscd3]

Clearly, many Freepers on this thread owe Cathy Young an apology for making simple-minded, vicious, incorrect accusations about her politics, her beliefs, and her character.

All I did was summarize the points of her article and demonstrate that they didn't logically support her rather vindictive position toward Mel Gibson.

All I know about Cathy is that she wrote a stupid article about Mel Gibson.

My only comments on Cathy were with respect to her stupid article.

Nothing that you have posted makes anything she said in her Passion article less stupid.

[OpusatFR]

Give me a break.

"Whatever happened to the left's mantra, "If you don't like it, don't watch?"

That doesn't impugn the woman's character, nor define her politics.

And I certainly don't need a nanny policing my posts.

[Antoninus]

Most days I am proud to be a Freeper. Today is not one of them.

Oh for heaven's sake, cut out the drama-queen act. What's the big deal? Ms. Young offered her opinion (an ill-founded and poorly argued opinion, if you ask me), and dozens responded in a hostile way. Welcome to the new media, pal.

If she can't take tough--even nasty--criticism, she shouldn't be in this business.

[jscd3]

Where did I ever say that Gibson's movie was anti-Semitic? I understand your misconception, however.

I think that anyone who has read your posts may be under the same misconception

In fact, when you listed a couple of "interesting" references in a post to me (e.g. my discussion of Jews but not Romans), I got the impression that you were trying to paint me as potentially ant-semetic as well

I'm sure that it was just a misconception...

[Antoninus]

All I did was summarize the points of her article and demonstrate that they didn't logically support her rather vindictive position toward Mel Gibson. All I know about Cathy is that she wrote a stupid article about Mel Gibson. My only comments on Cathy were with respect to her stupid article. Nothing that you have posted makes anything she said in her Passion article less stupid.

Exactly 100% correct.

[h.a. cherev]

Do they?

I don't know. Do you?

After all, you did question if there ever was a backlash on the German people.

And was there?

Certainly if the numerous Holocaust movies, documentaries (69 documentaries made since 1990), special presentations, survivor stories, interviews with the children of, myths surrounding, revisiting the scenes of, etc, have not caused a backlash on the German people, how can we "understand" the reaction of the ADL and other critics of the movie? Based on what?

Empathy with the Jewish people.

Could the answer be as simple as, "The Jewish people do not want any movie to portray them in a negative light"?

All "the Jewish people"? Do you think there's a conspiracy?

And the reaction to The Passion is a shot across the bow, demonstrating to any future producer what can be expected?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

For me, the movie is unimportant - the attempt to silence it and the reaction to those attempts are much more interesting.

I strongly disagree with the attempts to silence Gibson or beg him to change the dialog. I understand their motivations and don't think it has anything to do with making sure Jews are not attacked as a result of this movie. And I applaud Gibson's resistance and contempt for those who would dare to question him or get him to change his movie.

Gibson's movie will be honest and refreshing. Just as you are.

[h.a. cherev]

Now, I am not saying the murderers are to be mourned as the victims.

That's all my point was about.

But I am saying that millions of Ukrainians were not police persecuting the jews.

I didn't say they were.

And you can't hold that a victim of the holocaust's death meant more than someone who died in an air raid in London.

Both are tragic. But actually, I can do just that. For me, the former was a deliberate act of murder. The latter was a casualty of war. It may be a fine point or meaningless to you, but I suppose each of us can morally justify our view - to ourselves.

That was the point I was trying to make. But of course, you can twist however makes you feel better.

I see you point and have no interest in twisting it.

Have a nice day.

[dfwgator]

You do know what the Russians did to the ethnic Germans in East Prussia and other germanic enclaves throughout Eastern Europe in 1944-46, don't you?

Yes, pretty much the same things Germans did to them.

[h.a. cherev]

Or is he "not Jewish enough" because he doesn't run the ADL?

Spare me. Weeks ago, when the ADL first mentioned Gibson and his film, I wrote a letter to the local Jewish paper denouncing Abe Foxman and his overpaid attempts to be a movie critic.