Democrat (CATHOLIC) Kerry Urges Caution on 'Passion'

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Front-runner John Kerry arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday ready to debate his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination but unsure about the city's latest controversial production, "The Passion of the Christ."

"I don't know," he said when asked if he would see the Mel Gibson film about the last days of Jesus' life and its particularly harrowing focus on his crucifixion.

Kerry, a Catholic, said he was worried about the movie's potential anti-Semitism. Some critics have complained that Gibson portrays Jews as responsible for Jesus' death.

"I am concerned," he told reporters. "I don't know if it's there or not but there's a lot of it around now. I think we have to be careful."

The four-term senator from Massachusetts hasn't had much time to see movies lately. He has been running for president virtually since the beginning of last year.

In fact, the last movie he saw in a theater was another Mel Gibson flick released in 2002 called "We Were Soldiers," set in Vietnam where Kerry commanded a Navy Swift boat and was decorated for heroism.

Relaxed and chatty -- so long as the topic wasn't politics -- Kerry conceded aboard his campaign plane that he had enjoyed on video the special effects in "Terminator 3," starring California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Having declared the press cabin of his Boeing 727 a politics-free zone for about 10 minutes, the ever-cautious Kerry batted away questions about the state of the presidential race, his major rival Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, and even how he was adjusting to life with Secret Service protection.

But he appears to have had a seamless transition to the protective bubble, slipping easily in and out of black SUVs, working and making phone calls from the back seat.

In New York on Monday, his motorcade of about a dozen vehicles, including three press buses, shot through red lights in Manhattan. In Ohio and Minnesota, state troopers blocked highway on-ramps and intersections.

Despite what Kerry called "a great adventure," so many months on the campaign trail have taken a toll.

"We haven't sat down to a family dinner since maybe pre-Christmas," he said. "But I'm having a great time." He misses his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who has mostly stumped for her husband separately. The couple will see each other for the first time in 10 days when she joins him to await the results of Super Tuesday's 10 primaries and caucuses, including the big states of California, New York and Ohio.

Kerry's daughters from a previous marriage, Vanessa, who is studying medicine at Harvard, and Alexandra, a film student in Los Angeles, campaigned with their father during the holidays.

He acknowledged that he and Alex had had "some fights" but refused to say what about. Those in the know say it was probably involving politics. Alex has declared herself more liberal than her father.

"I never fight about that," Kerry said. "I'm a very good dad. I listen about their boyfriends."

"...but there's a lot of it around now "

Absolutely. Anti-Semitism is rampant- in the Democrat Party. The Congressional Black Caucus, the McKinney's from GA, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not exactly fond ,as Rep McKinney-D (GA ) would say- of " The Jeeeews."

The FORWARD,10/02/02:

" To judge by some reactions, black-Jewish relations are hitting a low point. The immediate cause is the rallying of "pro-Israel forces" around successful primary challenges to two veteran black incumbents in Congress. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and Earl Hilliard of Alabama, both DEMOCRATS, lost primaries this year to younger black politicians who benefited from a massive fund-raising effort on their behalf from across the country."

"McKinney and Hilliard backers have argued that JEWS are trying to dominate them politically and restrict the terms of the Middle East discourse."

"Start with the question of blacks and Jews. McKinney's father, Georgia state representative Billy McKinney, blamed her defeat on the "J-E-W-S."
Following McKinney's loss, Congressional Black Caucus chair Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat, told The Washington Post that African-American voters think " JEWISH people are attempting to pick our leaders."

"Rev. Jesse Jackson ( HYMIETOWN) — just back from his own peace mission to the Middle East, during which he had to cancel a scheduled meeting with the spiritual leader of HAMAS following yet another Hamas suicide bombing — reflected that the main pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "does not place a great premium on [the black-Jewish] coalition."

"Jackson had it exactly backwards. It was McKinney and Hilliard and the other nearly half of the BLACK CAUCUS who abstained or voted against the May 2 resolution supporting Israel's right to self-defense against suicide bombing, who subverted that coalition through their irresponsible ANTI-ISRAEL VOTES and rhetoric."

From Timeswatch.com, regarding Al Sharpton, Dem Candidate for President :

"...he ignores two other incendiary examples of Sharpton's hate-mongering, which the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby outlined in a column earlier this year."

"Jacoby writes of a 1991 incident: "A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and ANTI-SEMITIC riots erupt.
Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the 'diamond merchants'--code for Jews--with 'the blood of innocent babies' on their hands."

" Jacoby also notes this from 1995: "When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white JEWISH owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store."
"A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. 'We will not stand by,' he warns malignantly, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.'
"Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed.
'We're going to see that this cracker suffers,' says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell."
"On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno."

Kerry sounds just like Clinton,when Clinton claimed to have seen a lot of black churches burning as a child.

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