You have to hand it to fanatics: they don't let reason or possible consequences muddy their thinking. The latest example of this is Adel Smith, president of the Muslim Union of Italy, who is suing the pope and the Catholic church for asserting the superiority of Christianity to other religions. According to Signor Smith, who had earlier tried to have crucifixes removed from schools, this thought crime violates the Italian constitution which affirms the legal equality of all religions.
Attention, Adel. The pope is not Italian. He does not live in Italy. He is entitled to believe that the organization that he heads is superior to anything else including Islam, blanched almonds, the Canadian Football League or the Holy Ghost Big Bang Theory Pentecostal Fire and Brimstone Mission Temple Fireworks Stand. The public image of Italian Muslims will prosper in direct proportion to their distance from your chauvinistic bluster.
This is the most authoritative look at the origin of the anti-semitic controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's Passion. It provides information on Gibson's schimatic views and explains why he is being given an easier ride by Protestants than by Catholics. (Though why the notoriously gay, gray Jesuits should have given him a standing ovation is a mystery.)
Centuries ago one had to visit Bedlam and pay sixpence to hear the ravings of the mad, but, outside of the diaries of Kim Jong Il, where can one go today to encounter such inspired lunacy? Read on and you shall learn.
So much silliness has been uttered over Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ that it is difficult to know where to begin in exposing it to the light, but so far the prize for supreme loopiness in the service of film criticism must go to Christoper Hitchens.
I like Christopher Hitchens. When he is sober, and even many times when he is not, he can make a good deal of sense. But there is within Christopher an evil little sprite that pops up at the strangest moments and prods him into saying the stupidest things. On PBS recently he claimed that The Passion was “an incitement to sadomasochism, in the less attractive sense of the word.” Fearing, perhaps, that his audience might not be sure of what the more attractive side of sadomasochism was, Hitchens went on to say that Mel Gibson's movie made a deliberate "appeal to the gay Christian sadomasochistic niche market.”
Breath-taking.
Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is the world’s first medieval movie. It is the 21st-century equivalent of a Gothic cathedral: monumental, emotional, soaring, excessive and, at times, grotesque. Consequently, it is not a film that is easy for modernists to understand, as witnessed by the rage and bafflement that it has stirred in the minds of many reviewers. Christians of many varieties will flock to The Passion and appreciate that a big-budget film has treated a religious theme in a respectful manner but neither will most of them grasp what Gibson has accomplished.
Much has been made of the relentless and graphic violence of the movie – some have suggested that Gibson has done this cynically for the money, some have suggested a mental illness in the director, and others have blamed it on a Eucharistic obsession in his pre-Vatican II Catholicism. The key to this brutal ballet of tortured flesh and blood rather lies in Gibson’s desire to focus our attention on what his title promises: the suffering of the Anointed One, a ghastly suffering willingly undertaken to atone for the sins of every human creature, past, present and future. The price of such an atonement must naturally be enormously high and in the Garden Satan tempts Jesus with the possibility that it is in fact too much for any individual ever to bear. The irreligious, the anti-religious and the religiously liberal -- all of whom despise the notion of an inherently broken humanity -- recoil from the thought of a blood sacrifice for sin and thus miss Gibson’s point that it is humanity’s behaviour that has led to the beating and assassination of this innocent man-god. For Gibson it is not enough that Christ’s treatment at the hands of cruel men be sensitively and tastefully portrayed – his viewers must see everything. The gobbets of ripped flesh, the yanking of limbs from their sockets and the crunch of bone are not just the relics of an event in ancient Jerusalem but are also spiritual medicine for a sick world where everyone has forgotten that someone once died for them. The Passion of the Christ is therefore in the tradition of medieval drama, performed to remind the audience of the battle fought between God and the devil, to evoke pity and fear, and to recall souls to their duty. Little wonder that moderns with scant understanding of religion, such as Rick Salutin and Rick Groen, have missed the mark so widely in their assessments of the film.
Further proof that Gibson operated out of a self-consciously medieval sensibility can be seen in the faces of some of the film’s extras – faces that could have appeared on a north European canvas of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Look at the characters inhabiting Hieronymous Bosch’s “Christ Bearing the Cross”, or his "Christ Mocked". No one but Gibson or Federico Fellini has cast ugliness so effectively in the 500 years since. Then look at the 1515 crucifixion panel from Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim altar-piece: there is the same contorted and pierced Christ that Gibson gives us, blood as thick as syrup oozing from his wounded feet.
The acting in The Passion is superb. In Jim Caviezel we have, at last, a manly Jesus, not a wispy aesthete or soppy do-gooder. His sudden crushing of a snake's head in the Garden reminds us that this was a guy who need not have surrendered meekly and that his suffering was an act of strength, not helplessness. Monica Bellucci's beauty is such that more than one audience member wished her Mary Magdalene were still in the sinning business and Maia Morgenstern's Mary portrayed devotion, grief and dignity without descending into mawkishness.
There were a number of clever touches from Gibson that I appreciated. Soon after his arrest Jesus is struck on the head and loses the sight of one eye which swells and closes. The effect of this is to make the gaze of his remaining eye that much more intense and we are made more aware of what he is seeing at any given moment. Late in the movie a camera shot from above the cross frames his damaged face and his piercing glance, making it seem a piece of semi-abstract modern art, crude but sincere like one of Georges Rouault's Christs outlined in black.
I have left the question of anti-Semitism to the last because I do not think that an honest viewer could draw such a conclusion from watching this movie. Gibson removed the troublesome line from the Gospel of John wherein some Jews cry out that the blood of Jesus will be on them and their children and he went so far as to cast himself as the soldier driving the nails into Christ's hands. There are ugly Jewish faces in the film and handsome ones; some Jews shout for Barabbas, some for Jesus; some members of the Sanhedrin condemn him, others protest on his behalf. The perpetrators of most of the violence are Romans. It is directly contrary to the theology of The Passion to portray Christ as anything but a willing sacrifice or to state other than ALL humanity was to blame for the necessity of the crucifixion.
I didn't think I would like this movie. Reviewers I respected -- like Michael Coren -- had decried it. I went fearfully, anticipating a bloody mess and the same sort of historical travesty as Gibson had wrought in Braveheart or The Patriot. I wrong. This is a great movie and no one will be able to put the life and death of Jesus on film again in quite the same way.
More omens that the end of the world as we know it is at hand. Not only has support for the federal Liberal party fallen below 50% but a recent poll in the Globe and Mail shows little support for official bilingualism. If the readers of the Official Newspaper of the Canadian Establishment can't muster up majority enthusiasm for the pillar of Trudeau's vision for Canada, what else may we soon expect? Readers should keep an eye open for hitherto unthinkable propositions such as honest government, a pro-Western foreign policy and the return of flogging.
The New Yorker pans The Passion of the Christ. There is an almost perfect corelation between David Denby's disapproval and box office success, so Gibson's movie may well be come a popular hit. Denby doesn't explicitly call Mel a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, or a neo-con, but it wouldn't surprise me if those words were in the review prior to the final edit.
Other reviewers in print this morning range from slightly to considerably more impressed with the movie. They all point out, though, that the movie portrays the last 12 hours of Jesus life to the exclusion of everything else. As in all book adaptations, much has to be omitted for brevity and clarity, but this seems a peculiar choice. As an uninterested observer I have always considered the most fascinating and significant parts of the Greatest Story to be Jesus' life and teachings before his death, and his resurrection after it, rather than the gruesome mechanics of the death itself. While his crucifixion was no doubt agonizing and horrific, it was presumably no more so than that of the hundreds of thousands of others so killed by the Romans two thousand years ago, or for that matter by the Saudis today.
Despite the nattering of many professional Jews, most of whom usually know better, thoughtful Orthodox Jewish opinion is much more positive than that of Denby. Some critics of the Passion (who have still not seen the movie) can perhaps be forgiven for fighting the last war. Ultra-liberal Jewish critics are offended by the movie for the same reason that non-Jewish ultra-liberal critics are: they are deeply afraid that people who take the Passion seriously might also be inclined to take the rest of the Bible seriously. Devout Christians are no threat to the Jewish people or the Jewish state, but they might well become a profound threat to the worst excesses of secular liberalism. Perhaps the High Priests of Tolerance, Alternative Lifestyles, Choice and Moral Relativism are right to be afraid. They're the only ones who have something to fear from a Christian revival.
A heartwarming and true story from the Straits Times of 3 January 2004:
Sir, On 7th December, I took part in the Singapore Marathon. Before the event, I went to a temporary toilet outside the National Stadium, and unfortunately overbalanced as I sat over the trench. After a struggle, I managed to save myself from falling in, but sadly my wallet tumbled down and fell into the latrine. I tried to retrieve it, but it was far out of reach, and submerged in a pit of filth, so with a heavy heart I left it there and set off for the race.
After the marathon was over, at about noon, I contacted the event organisers, and told them of my mishap. That very evening, a man called Mai Ng turned up at my door and presented me with my wallet, which was soiled beyond all imagination. Even now, it stinks so badly that it makes me vomit and I cannot keep it in the house. I can only imagine the terrible stench that must have greeted Mai Ng when he was ordered to find it. I am deeply touched by the effort put in by all those who retrieved and returned my wallet and I hope that Mai Ng recovers from his illness very soon. Yours sincerely, Tan Ai Lee.
Just when you think you've got this whole "hate speech" business figured out, someone changes all the rules.
Earlier this year B.C. teacher Chris Kempling was told by a court that the Charter right to freedom of speech did not apply in his case -- he was a teacher who had written a letter to a newspaper pointing out the health risks of homosexual behaviour. He was suspended from his job and sanctioned by his union.
Enter Mr Don Cherry, a sports commentator of little intelligence but great renown. Mr Cherry opined that none but foreigners and Frenchmen wore visors during professional hockey matches. Statistically he was close to the truth but he was condemned by the CBC and the federal government for saying words likely to hurt the feelings of others. Lest his audience hear other insensitive verities his show was placed on a tape delay.
Last week a hand-puppet, imported at great expense from the United States by the Canadian taxpayer, made jokes about Quebecers masculinity and hygiene. The former head of the New Democratic Party labeled this "utterly vile" "racist filth" and "vicious hatemongering." The Toronto Star agreed that the puppet was hateful and racist and advised its employer never to return to Canada.
OK, the trend here is clear: Canadians are intolerant and are particularly inclined to punish speakers who offend certain protected species. But lo! What is this ruling from the Federal Court of Appeal in the case of one Leon Mugasera, late of Rwanda and now a resident of Quebce City?
It seems that Mr Mugasera is wanted in his home country on charges of crimes against humanity. This golden-tongued orator stands accused of urging his fellow Hutus to "kill the Tutsis and throw their bodies in the Nyabarongo River." "Don't be afraid, " he is alleged to have said, "Know that the person whose neck you do not cut is the one who will cut yours." Apparently some of his listeners took his remarks seriously enough to have participated in the hideous genocide which followed.
There is a sequel to those remarks. Mr Mugasera fled his homeland to the warm embrace of Canada. Immigration officials have been trying to deport him since 1995 but taking full advantage of our legal safeguards which have made this country a beacon to suffering humanity, he appealed and reappealed before finally winning a decision from the Federal Court of Appeals. Justice Robert Decary called Mugasera's remarks "misplaced" and "unfortunate" but says they would have fallen within the acceptable boundaries for free speech in Canada.
Colour me confused. What can Canadians say these days?
There was a time in the history of political thought when it was commonplace to declare that it took a good man to be a good king. Then Niccolo Machiavelli came long and declared that it was even better to have just the reputation for being good. Now behold in 2004 the deep thoughts of one Ethan Hawke, poet, actor, adulterer (he cheated on Uma Thurman!) and political philosopher:
"I think that George W. Bush is probably the least prepared person to be president of the United States that's been elected in a long time, if not ever... Think about it — we have an ex-coke fiend as a president....And he has a sense of entitlement that I think Bill Clinton never had. Had he had it, he would have said, 'I'm not going to go under oath about my sexual affairs — it's not relevant to my presidency.' Martin Luther King suffered from infidelity [suffered from!], and so did John F. Kennedy. And you're much more likely to find great leadership coming from a man who likes to have sex with a lot of women than one who is monogamous..."
Goodbye Abraham Lincoln, hello Hugh Hefner.
What is it with bovines and headline writers? Real human interest stories, that's what! Today it's Swimming cow saves farmer's wife. This one has got it all: women, cows, water.
Paul Taylor, an angry Alberta journalist, calls for Liberal Members of Parliament to be lynched. While he advocates hanging for most of them he also suggests, in a moment of clemency, the possibility that some may only be forced to walk the plank for the years of corruption and thievery that they have wrought on Canada. I call this kind of talk irresponsible.
It is the duty of every honest Canadian in this time of moral re-examination to propose punishments for errant legislators that would really put the fear of God into them. Hanging or drowning in shark-infested waters are threats that are far too mild for the likes of the Shawinigan Strangler and his scurvy gang. Having endured years of Sheila Copps, these are hardened characters indeed, much in need of more imaginative ways of ending their criminous careers.
In that spirit then I advance the following methods of execution, drawn from historical examples with an eye toward both ingenuity and multiculturalism:
• Being stamped on by elephants. This was a favourite at the courts of Indian rajahs and has the advantage of providing employment for the pachyderms and mahouts left unemployed by PETA-bankrupted circuses.
• Death by carpet. Mongol law forbade the shedding of royal blood so princes who fell afoul of the khan were placed between thick rugs which were shaken up and down until the victim inside was reduced to jelly. Reviving this custom might do much to revive the Quebec textile industry, hard hit by cheap imports.
• Flaying alive. The Turks were wont to celebrate victories over the infidels by removing the skins of captured leaders and stuffing the remains with straw to provide a life-like trophy to send back to the sultan. An entire Hall of Shame at the proposed Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg might well be designated for these effigies.
• Execution Mohawk-style. Canada's First Citizens were no shirkers when it came to taking delight in the death-throes of their captives. Liberal cabinet ministers could test the fruits of their aboriginal policies and, at the same time, provide meaningful jobs for natives by subjecting themselves to the genocidal Iroquois tortures traditionally meted out to Jesuits and Hurons.
With a little thought and planning Canadians could pioneer whole new sporting ways of dispesnsing with failed and corrupt politicians. There are great television possibilities here and I can't wait for our media entrepreneurs to take this idea and run with it.
It may the Religion of Peace but it is not the Religion of Love, judging by Saudi Arabia's prohibitions against the celebration of Valentine's Day.
“It is a pagan Christian holiday and Muslims who believe in God and Judgment Day should not celebrate or acknowledge it or congratulate people on it,” an edict issued by the Fatwa Committee said.
Florists and gift shops will be vigilantly scrutinized by storm troopers of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to ensure they manifest no support for romantic hanky-panky.
The English newspaper The Guardian recently asked a number of British and American writers what they thought of the justifiability of the war in Iraq. Predictably most of them opposed it; one of them was still uncertain whether fighting Hitler had been a good idea. But there were a few supporters of the war, among them the novelist Alan Silitoe who quoted a poem by John Milton entitled "The End of Violent Men":
Oh, how comely it is and how reviving
To the Spirits of just men long opprest!
When God into the hands of their deliverer
Puts invincible might
To quell the might of the Earth, th' oppressour,
The brute and boist'rous force of violent men...
He all their Ammunition
And feats of War defeats
With plain Heroic magnitude of mind...
Their Armories and Magazins contemns,
Renders them useless, while
With winged expedition
Swift as the lightning glance he executes
His errand on the wicked, who surpris'd
Lose their defence distracted and amaz'd.
Though a poet, Milton was also a political thinker, writer of the most eloquent defence of free speech in the English language, and a revolutionary. He supported Parliament's rebellion against the would-be absolutist Charles I and served as secretary to the republican government which replaced the deposed monarch.
The examples of Milton (and Lord Byron who tried to rouse Europe to the defence of Greek independence) remind us that there have been times when poets cried out against tyranny instead of demonizing good men who fought to overthrow evil.
"Experts are saying that there are two problems here. 1. They do not work. 2. They do not protect from sexually transmitted diseases."
That's it? Only those two problems? I can think of lots more.
Mixed in with the commentary on the Saturday primaries on CNN was a short "human interest" blurb. The talking head, part of a carefully selected line-up that looks like America, said by way of introduction: "Some folks like working on their cars on the weekend. Other folks like working on their boats. Here's a guy who did both at the same time..." After a smarmy grin, the screen cut to a shot of the latest group of Cubans risking their lives to escape a dictatorship in a converted car. Yep, there's just nothing funnier that refugees from Communism.
And the next time someone on CNN takes aim at George W. Bush for his malapropisms or mispronunciations, I hope they recall that throughout the televised address from National Military University this afternoon, they spelt the North African country "Lybia."
Do not use clingfilm as condoms – Health experts tell teenagers
If you were an official of a once-mighty church that is now dying -- with fewer Anglicans worshipping on a Sunday than there are British Muslims attending Friday prayers -- is this the sort of thing you would be spending your time doing?
Enforcing gender correctness on the Three Wise Men is, no doubt, a cause worthy of the Canadian government's Language Police but if I were Archbishop of Canterbury I would have those witless committee members parading down Picadilly dressed in sackcloth and ashes bewailing their sins and those of their nation.
Which of these immortal phrases on human liberty was uttered by a Canadian?
1. "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
2. "The government will not tolerate statements that create dissonance in our society."
Well, that's easy of course. In a country where freedom of speech is considered an obstacle to happy group-think, it is inconceivable that the first statement (often atttributed to Voltaire) could have emerged from a Canadian. So hats off to Jean Augustine, junior Minister of Multiculturalism for making clear the Martin government's approach to liberty.
While I am sympathetic to the feelings of the mother who was watching the Super Bowl half-time show with her daughter when they were both mugged by the now-infamous tidal-wave of vulgarity, I cannot agree with her that the episode constituted "cultural terrorism". Nor can I agree with Siberian-Canadians who complain that the policy of educating their children in residential schools constituted a "cultural genocide".
All that claims of "symbolic rape", or ""virtual holocaust" or "cultural Chernobyl" tell us is that no sexual intercourse, mass murder or nuclear meltdown actually took place. Nouns like genocide, holocaust and terrorism are powerful words, absolute in their meaning, and they cannot be usefully augmented by the addition of adjectives. In fact the use of such qualifiers to score rhetorical points diminishes language as a whole, in much the same way as advertisers have debased the meaning of words such as "fabulous", "stupendous" or "incredible".
Failure to heed my warning will inevitably result in a syntactical chainsaw massacre.
Somewhere in one of the many unpleasant recesses of Hell, Louis XIV is wincing in pain. Not because of the torment inflicted by demons charged with punishing him for his many crimes as King of France, but because Janet Jackson has appropriated his personal symbol and stuck it on her right nipple. Viewers of last night's Super Bowl will have caught a glimpse of Louis' "sun-in-splendour" adorning one of Jackson's unnatural mammaries just after her top was ripped off by her fellow artiste Justin Timberlake, the climax to a musical performance which promised "I'll have you naked by the end of this song."
This was a fitting ending to a football half-time show that was certainly the lowest point yet reached in American network broadcasting. Other remarkable moments during those thirty minutes included:
A frenzy of groin-grabbing by rapper Nelly, purveyor of an energy drink known as Pimp Juice.
An exhibit of precision pelvis-pumping by semi-nude dancers.
Bud Lite ads which featured farting horses, crotch-biting dogs and horny chimpanzees.
An ad built around kids who shout "Holy S---!" when they see the wonderful new Chevrolet.
A Charmin ad about a quarterback who can't stop fondling the toilet paper on his center's butt.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell (Colin's boy) has called for an investigation of the entire sorry production and has expressed his disgust to Viacom, parent company of both CBS and MTV. Perhaps the concatenation of indecency will bring in some new regulations or, at least, some self-restraint.
Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble has charged the human rights industry with being accomplices in terrorism.
Speaking at an international conference of victims of terrorism Trimble said: "One of the great curses of this world is the human rights industry. They justify terrorist acts and end up being complicit in the murder of innocent victims."
Colombian vice-president Francisco Santos also said that human rights groups were hindering progress towards peace in his country. "For human rights organizations to call [the Colombian rebel group] FARC 'armed opposition groups' undermines the struggle of those who have decided to side with democracy."
The Madrid conference ended with this declaration: "We call on NGOs and other civil organizations that stand for the defense of human rights to make a commitment to defend victims of terrorism and to identify terrorist acts for what they are, regardless of their cause or pretext and without striking balances or blurring the distinction between victims and executioners."
Now all we need is for some far-seeing Canadian citizen to decry the excesses of the human rights industry in this country.
