New York Times Review
Just a few things to mention from today's Sunday Times, most of which are troublesome.

The onslaught continues with regards to The Passion of the Christ. If the term overkill had any meaning to reporters, this story would have died a long time ago. The film would have been released to an initial wave of fuss, made its costs back, and, most likely, would have drifted off into memory, but the writers at the Times just can't seem to let it die. Again, not to belabor the point, but this seems like an instance where it's becoming harder and harder to defend liberalism on the grounds that it's pushing the acceptable limits. The article in question this day is by Frank Rich entitled Mel Gibson Forgives Us for His Sins. In essence, Rich makes the argument tries at the offset to sound as if he's taking the high road and avoiding the attack Gibson levied upon him in September, however, this quickly turns into nothing more than an outright mudslinging retort, the venom of which is much more acidic than Gibson's.

Where to start? How about this gem:

With its laborious build-up to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other bodily fluids, Mr. Gibson's film is constructed like nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots. Of all the "Passion" critics, no one has nailed its artistic vision more precisely than Christopher Hitchens, who on "Hardball" called it a homoerotic "exercise in lurid sadomasochism" for those who "like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time."

A classy assessment, right? Surely, this type of criticism isn't something we'd hear from real intellectuals, but apparently it is, and it goes on from there to include a self-styled one in the form of Christopher Hitchens. First off, Hitchens is nothing more than an intellectual windbag, a man who I have issues with pertaining to some of his other work, so let's just push his comments aside and focus on Rich's assessment. Comparing this film to pornography is little more than a shallow attempt to criticize it as being nothing more than a glorified snuff film with little or no redeeming value. Apparently, this is not the case, otherwise how can you explain the numbers of people who have flocked, no pun intended, to see this film? Essentially, you can't. Rich is doing nothing more than slapping a label upon this film in a lame attempt to further sully Gibson's reputation as a bigoted, sadomasochistic lunatic. Rich, on the other hand, is also adhering to what is becoming an apparent trait of this bastion of liberalism, mock and harshly criticize that which you strive so much to be disliked but is in fact popular. "How can people like this film," Rich seems to be asking? The reasons why are apparently too complex for him to comprehend, most likely due to his obsession with lambasting Gibson. Later, though, Rich asserts that, "My quarrel is not with most of the millions of Christian believers who are moved to tears by "The Passion." They bring their own deep feelings to the theater with them, and when Mr. Gibson pushes their buttons, however crudely, they generously do his work for him, supplying from their hearts the authentic spirituality that is missing in his jamboree of bloody beefcake." This is obviously not the case. In fact, Rich seems completely without thought on how to explain the film's popularity and, instead, resorts to a sort of mockery of the masses that can easily be leveled against the public at large. The public likes the film because they're easily manipulated, and, as he states, Gibson knows how to "push their buttons". You know that Rich was dying to compare the masses to the obedient sheep with Gibson serving as their corrupt shepherd, but even he couldn't sink that low, at least not yet.

Now, onto the Jewish question. This article isn't really about the film itself or the public that wants to see it. No, it's about continuing the insinuations and accusations that the film is nothing more than a vehicle for Gibson's anti-Semitic beliefs. Rich asserts that the film is "not necessarily" bad for Jews. Why? Well, in another potshot, he explains that Gibson may not like the Jews, but he's not a filmmaker of propaganda along the lines of Leni Riefenstahl. And in America the reaction has been tepid at best. If that's true, why then does Rich feel the need to state that "the fracas over 'The Passion' has made me feel less secure as a Jew in America than ever before?" How can you say that it's not a threat to the safety of the Jews in America in one sentence only to proclaim that you "feel less secure" later on in the same article? My theory is that Rich wrote this article in a fit of rage. Proclaiming one thing then resorting to the opposite in the span of several paragraphs. It's obvious that this article was meant to be nothing more than a gut reaction to Gibson's earlier statements and subsequent forgiving of Rich's criticism. Perhaps stepping back and reevaluating the article as a whole would have served Rich better than coming off as a rampaging lunatic in his own right.

Rich's main gripe is thus:

What concerns me much more are those with leadership positions in the secular world — including those in the media — who have given Mr. Gibson, "The Passion" and its most incendiary hucksters a free pass for behavior that is unambiguously contrived to vilify Jews.

Oh, please. Rich litters the rest of the article with statements deploring how "the Jewish high priests are also depicted as grim sadists with bad noses and teeth — Shylocks and Fagins from 19th-century stock." I guess if this is how you perceive this group as being depicted, and then that's your perceptions. My beef with this is regardless of how they're portrayed, didn't these priests have an active role to some extent? From all indications, it appears they did, and the fact remains they were Jewish. Would Gibson have been better rewriting the story further to replace the Jews with, perhaps, a group of Hispanics, Russian, or Canadians?

He goes on in the most damning paragraph:

Nor do some of these pundits seem to recognize Holocaust denial when it is staring them in the face. In an interview in the current Reader's Digest, Ms. Noonan asks Mr. Gibson: "The Holocaust happened, right?" After saying that some of his best friends "have numbers on their arms," he responds: "Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps." Yes, mistakes happened, atrocities happened, war happened, some of the victims were Jews. This is the classic language of contemporary Holocaust deniers, from David Irving to Mr. Gibson's own father, Hutton Gibson, a prominent anti-Semitic author and activist. Their rhetorical strategy is to diminish Hitler's extermination of Jews by folding those deaths into the war's overall casualty figures, as if the Holocaust were an idle byproduct of battle instead of a Third Reich master plan for genocide. Rather than challenge Mel Gibson on this, Ms. Noonan merely reinforces his junk history. "So the point is that life is tragic and it is full of fighting and violence, mischief and malice," she replies.

No, that is not the point of the history of the Holocaust.

Sure, there's no argument that Gibson could have phrased his answer better and in much more unambiguous terms, but he didn't. On the other hand, perhaps, just perhaps, this reading of his comments is nothing more than an interpretation of someone who is claiming to admonish Gibson for his conspiratorial accusations and reading more into it than is actually there. Isn't that possible? I think so, but this is apparently sacrilegious to the Times. For a paper that willingly employed a serial-fabricator, maybe they should tell their writers to ease up on the attacks and focus on good writing. Rich comes off in this piece as a rabid attack dog, much like he claims Gibson to be. To me, there's something not quite right about that.

Rich goes on to insinuate that Gibson is a conspiracy theorist that's flown off the deep end again and again, and has been allowed to do so by the likes of Diane Sawyer and Bill O'Reilly. These charges seem a tad hallow.

Rich does accomplishes nothing more in this article than to extend the debate further, and, most likely, vainly attempting to elicit another off-the-cuff response from Gibson that will prove to be fodder for further articles written in the same vain. This is poor journalism to say the least, and it’s articles like this that make me long for the day when the biggest concern at the Times was fact checking a Jayson Blair article.