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.

[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]

I'm so embarrassed!

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."

[11th Earl of Mar]

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

Or, "How can you criticize a movie you haven't seen?"

"Vice President Dan Quayle, who admitted he never saw the show, criticized the sitcom Murphy Brown..."

[LisaMalia]

This is the third article I've read on FR this morning by the lib press disparaging Mel Gibson and this movie. Why all this bad press? Because they are shaking in their shoes about this movie, what it represents, and the effect it will have on those who view it.

Note to liberal Hollywood, and the liberal press writing this stuff...you should be afraid, be very afraid. The tide is turning, slowly but surely.

[OpusatFR]

I don't deal with ancient history or trolls.

[JeeperFreeper]

Mel Gibson answered the question about whether he believes the Holocaust occurred (and this is from her own quote of Gibson in the article) as follows, "...Yes, of course..." And yet this is somehow a denial. It did not matter a whit what Gibson said or did in this interview, her scribblings were to be a hatchet job on Gibson.

[johnny7]

I should have made it clear that Landesman quotes such a claim by one of his sources but does not make the assertion himself. Also, the column misspelled the last name of Slate media critic Jack Shafer. I regret the errors.

Cathy is an angry socialist as full of the aggressive zeal possessed by any loyal Trotskyite. Mistakes are made during the struggle and should be regretted but not so as to affect the pure intentions of the movement.

[2banana]

So yes, there is a double standard because communism is seen as having "progressive" goals. And yes, the Soviet regime engaged in mass murder on a Nazi-like scale. But that hardly justifies Gibson's comments.

Hardly justifies Cathy Young comments...

[CWW]

This article is a sad example of what Satan does to divide Christians and Jews. And I will bet dollars to donuts that the authors and persons quoted are secular Jews and do not practice their faith.

The fact remains that some "Jewish" scholars do not want the Passion to be shown because they do not like the historical fact that Jewish hierarchy was intimately involved in the death of Jesus. But those fact cannot change anymore than I can change the fact that Germans allowed Hitler to come to power, or that Americans permitted slavery to exist for 200+ years. Facts are stubborn things.

Mel's overall response to the criticism is correct -- It was not the Jews who killed the Christ -- it was the sin of Mankind (collectively). That's the message.

To my Jewish brethern -- May the God of our fathers bless you and keep you.

[dfwgator]

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

[longtermmemmory]

This is from the Boston Globe. The next NYT casualty. Newspapers are already extinct they just refuse to report it.

[robertpaulsen]

Speaking of the Holocaust.

If The Passion, based on the gospels, is "an inflammatory screed with anti-Semitic overtones", then aren't the numerous Holocaust movies (ie, Schindler's List) inflammatory screeds with anti-German overtones?

I mean, no one worried about violent actions taken against innocent Germans. Seems kind of one-sided.

[kitkat]

So, this writer is saying that BEFORE the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic church claimed that Jews were Christ killers. IT DID NOT! I was a child in school before the Second Vatican Council, and very strongly remember the nuns teaching us that the crucifixion was pre-ordained in the bible, and that the Jews were innocent. Herod, on the other hand..........

People who have seen the movie say that there is NO anti-Semitism in it. This writer is a people-divider.

[Aquinasfan]

But George Mason University law professor David Bernstein points out on the Volokh Conspiracy weblog that Holocaust "revisionists" typically do not deny that Jews were killed; they simply minimize the killing,

These people are beneath contempt.

If you're from NE, boycott the Globe!

[11th Earl of Mar]

Oh, yeah.

I am a troll.

I have been posting here for several years, just waiting to out myself on this thread by criticizing the double standard of the leftists in the American media.

[jscd3]

So yes, there is a double standard because communism is seen as having "progressive" goals. And yes, the Soviet regime engaged in mass murder on a Nazi-like scale. But that hardly justifies Gibson's comments.

Let me see if I get this:

1. Gibson is criticised for thinking that the Nazi attrocities were horrible and ghastly, but, - maybe -, in a century of mass murder on an even larger scale by the Soviets and Chinese, not uniquely horrible
2. Evidence is provided that, yes indeed, the Soviets and Moaists did in fact commit systematic mass murder on a scale even larger than the Nazis
3. Evidence is provided that there is a double standard with respect to mass killings by the Commies, as opposed to their brother socialists the Nazis, the Marxist bastards being given an unwarrented pass because they commited genocide for "progressive" reasons
4. The author seems to accept that the issues noted in points 2 and 3 are in fact accurate
5. Therefore, the author concludes that Gibson's position in point 1 is horribly wrong

Have I missed anything?

Or have I correctly summed up this rancid dingbat's position?