The Passion of the Christ (part 2)
In my last post, I began my own analysis of a very controversial movie, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. In this post I would like to look at Mel Gibson's alleged Anti-Semitism and Anti-Semitism in the movie.

Most of the problem that people have with Gibson is that his father is a Holocaust denier or revisionist, that is, he disbelieves that the Holocaust is as bad as is claimed. David Frum's Diary on National Review Online had a very insightful look at what Mel Gibson said in two interviews; one with Peggy Noonan which appeared in Reader's Digest, the other with Diane Sawyer. Both women lobbed an easy question at Gibson, which he could have answered and set at ease any one's minds concerning how close he came to his father's belief system and both times he muffed the chance.

Here are other posts on this subject:
NZOOM - ONE News - Entertainment
Strange Women Lying in Ponds: More on Mel Gibson's Holocaust Statement
The Volokh Conspiracy
Ananova - Gibson defends father over Holocaust

The Ant-Defamation League has voiced opposition to the movie and has received Anti-Semetic responses to it. The Jewish community is traditionally against Passion Plays (Gibson's movie would be considered as one), and the reason is most passion plays refer to a verse in Matthew 27:25 where the Jewish crowd responds to Pilate's profession of innocence by saying "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"

Part of the problem with Passion Plays and Gibson's movie is that looking at a small portion of Jesus's life leaves out the greater portion and thereby a context for seeing how the Jewish people responded to Jesus as a whole.

The Passion of the Christ (part 1)
On Monday (Mar. 1), I went to see "The Passion of the Christ" a film produced and directed by Mel Gibson. It has been a controversial film from the outset. Mr. Gibson has been accused of making an Anti-Semetic film, being a Holocaust denier, trying to profit off of religious sentiment and probably lots of other things. People have said he won't work in Hollywood again.

Over the next posts, I hope to examine Gibson's statements, as well as make my own comments about what I saw in the movie myself.

First of all Gibson's reason for making the movie:

"My ultimate hope is that this story's message of tremendous courage and sacrifice might inspire tolerance, love and forgiveness. We're definitely in need of those things in today's world."

The movie website said:

"Gibson co-wrote a screenplay with Benedict Fitzgerald Wise Blood that drew faithfully from the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the script's main sources."

However, in reading articles about the movie on the internet I came across Tim Challies who said:

"Gibson drew heavily from Sister Anne Emmerich's devotional book entitled The Dolorous Passion of Christ. Emmerich is known as being a Mystic, Stigmatist, Visionary, and Prophet. She apparently received many visions in which God provided her details about Jesus' last days that are not contained in the Bible. ... Reading through The Dolorous Passion of Christ after seeing the movie I was shocked by how closely the script of The Passion of the Christ follows this book."

You can read the book here and look for yourself. I saw plenty of similarities in a short perusal.

Politics and Hypocrisy
They go together, don't they? Take the current presidential election. The Republicans have the one who avoided service in Vietnam. Twelve years ago it was the Democrats and the statements were dyametrically opposite. Now all of a sudden, Democrats believe in states rights (only on some issues, of course) and Republicans are for federal interventionism. Hmmmm.

It's almost enough to make you sick. Nobody is consistent anymore. Former war protesters are now waving the flag. Former believers in letting the states decide, now want to amend the Constitution. Sometimes you need a scorecard to know who believes what.

One reason is that subjectivism rules. There are no absolutes and whatever is expedient or convenient is held to. When there are no absolutes, anything goes. Rules? Ignore them. Laws, too. Only what I think is right is important. And don't tell me I'm wrong, because, after all, it's just your opinion.

Anyway, enough ranting (:-)for one post...

Just Rambling
I like to pick up the Sunday edition (page down one or two times to "Crossroads") of a nearby large city newspaper. It has a whole section of editorials that I read, usually one or two issues that has pro and con articles.

There were three articles on Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" (I'm not saying anything until I actually see it), two on Howard Dean's (how many times did the poor guy get called John Dean?) campaign, one on the primary system, pro and con articles on Cuban policy, education, Europe-US relations, citizenship, and of course Ralph Nader's announcing his candidacy. A couple of local ones, one on the Great Lakes specifically Lake Michigan were also there. There were many political cartoons also. A nice read on a Sunday afternoon while watching NASCAR and waiting for baseball season to start.

Take a look and see what I read.

Bush AWOL?
Well, I said previously that this would not go away. Suddenly the Democratic party, after so many years of being the anti-Vietnam War party are now embracing it and bashing Bush for serving in the National Guard. Of course in 1992, it was Bill Clinton's lack of service that was an issue with the Republicans raising the issue. Interesting how these things go, isn't it.

I have great respect for John Kerry and anyone who went to Vietnam and fought. Now, looking back on events, I also respect his opposition upon his return. He served and had every right to do so. I also now respect those who opposed and fled the country or suffered imprisonment. More should be done to honor their sacrifices for what they thought was right.

My wish is still the same and it seems it was John Kerry's wish at one time too. Let's heal the country about Vietnam and not continue to divide. Reportedly he gave a speech in 1992 after Bob Kerrey, running for president that year, criticized Clinton over his lack of military service.

Here are some of his reported comments from that speech:

"I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way. By that I mean that yesterday, during this presidential campaign, and even throughout recent times, Vietnam has been discussed and written about without an adequate statement of its full meaning."

"The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them; that one help identify the positive things that we learned about ourselves and about our nation, not play to the divisions and differences of that crucible of our generation.

"We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it. Are we now, 20 years or 30 years later, to forget the difficulties of that time, of families that were literally torn apart, of brothers who ceased to talk to brothers, of fathers who disowned their sons, of people who felt compelled to leave the country and forget their own future and turn against the will of their own aspirations?

"Are we now to descend, like latter-day Spiro Agnews, and play, as he did, to the worst instincts of divisiveness and reaction that still haunt America? Are we now going to create a new scarlet letter in the context of Vietnam?"

"I would like to make a simple and straightforward appeal, an appeal from my heart, as well as from my head. To all those currently pursuing the presidency in both parties, I would plead that they simply look at America. We are a nation crying out for leadership, for someone who will bring us together and raise our sights. We are a nation looking for someone who will lift our spirits and give us confidence that together we can grow out of this recession and conquer the myriad of social ills we have at home.

"We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric."

I can only hope as Kerry becomes the nominee that he will heed his own words and urge those in his party to do so. And that the Republicans will cease trying to turn Kerry into something less than he is--one who served with distinction and even valor.

Been Away
Sorry, I've been away for some family matters for the past week. Hope to post again soon.

Super Bowl XXXVIII
I know by now that I was not the only one offended by yesterday's halftime show. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was also: "We were extremely disappointed by the MTV-produced halftime show. It was totally inconsistent with assurances our office was given about the content of the show.

"The show was offensive, inappropriate and embarrassing to us and our fans. We will change our policy, our people and our processes for managing the halftime entertainment in the future in order to deal far more effectively with the quality of this aspect of the Super Bowl."

As my friend at politicaldevotions.com (and credit Tim with many of the links I used here) would say, take action by contacting your federal and state officials. While you're at it, send one to CBS, its local affiliate and MTV as well as their parent company Viacom. Use the above link to also send an email to the FCC. And include the NFL. While you're at it send an email to AOL, the sponsor of the half-time program.

Some will think I'm being prudish or to quote a presidential candidate "silly". Fine. If I want to see a female breast, I know where to find them. If I want to watch performers grab their crotch, I'll tune in MTV (don't hold your breath). If I want to watch juvenile antics, there are plenty of channels to tune to. But if I want to watch a sporting event, that's what I want to see.

The US according to the primaries
A nice cartoon from Jack Ohman, The Portland Oregonian shows my feelings about the primary season. The pundits are looking at eliminating the rest of the field after Kerry became the front-runner. All of the candidates "must win" a primary in the next two weeks. Dean is running out of money and his campaign is "in chaos" because he got rid of Trippi and hired Leen.

And what do pundits know? They practically anointed Howard Dean after the Al Gore endorsement. And they had written off Kerry. Shuld we believe anything else they have to say?

Why the importance of the first two states? Americans love "a winner" and our attention spans are not too long. TV, being primarily an entertainment medium, knows this and wants to get things focused on the two main candidates.

NH Aftermath
Listening to the spin. Kerry of course, needs no spin; he's won both.

Dean on CNN: A Solid Second
Dean is done. He has money to keep on for awhile. He ranks no higher than fourth in three of the polls for Feb. 3 (SC, AR, OK).

General Wesley Clark for President - Official Campaign Web Site "Wes Clark fought a hard campaign in New Hampshire, the backyard of two other candidates. His competitive finish in the Granite State positions him well for next week's slate of nation wide primaries." Get real. Only a candidate would consider 12% total vote, 27% behind the winner and 12-13% out of second place, competitive. Clark will at least compete in the next states. He has raised quite a bit of money and is in for awhile. He leads in OK and is statistical dead heat in AR but fourth in SC.

John Edwards: "Thank You New Hampshire...
Thank you voters of New Hampshire! You kept the Edwards momentum incredibly strong and helped us more than triple our support in less than three weeks.
This campaign continues to shoot up." More campaign spin but Edwards is banking on SC where he leads the polls. He's also currently second in OK.

CNN.com - Lieberman: I'm exceeding expectations - Jan. 27, 2004: "'The standard for showing some strength here is to do better than expected. A week ago we were in the low single digits. After a very strong debate performance Senator Lieberman jumped up in most of the tracking polls,' " Lieberman had nothing on his website, which could be significant. He had to be hoping for better than he did. It's hard to talk about "Joementum" with a fifth place finish. Lieberman is no better than fourth in SC, AR and OK

Kucinich and Sharpton are fringe still. Sharpton is strong in SC.

As always, things may change. The other candidates may take the gloves off, now that Kerry has won two contests in a row.

UPDATE: My intention here was not to necessarily predict, but to show how the campaigns were interpreting results. If you listened to them all, you would have thought that all of them won here. Also Ben has added another thoughtful comment and I have responded to it.

UPDATE II: Of course, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central had their usual humorous take on the same subject.

Vietnam
It is amazing that almost 30 years after the Vietnam War officially ended with the fall of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Americans are still polarized over it. Only this time, the roles are seemingly reversed. We find Michael Moore, a supporter of Democratic candidate Wesley Clark, accusing Bush of being a deserter (see the article FactCheck.org Bush A Military Deserter? Calm Down, Michael).

You wouldn't find too many Americans any more, I don't think, who would say that we prosecuted the Vietnam War correctly. Some say we shouldn't have been there at all, others that the war was micro-managed by politicians who were afraid of public opinion.

My own personal history is that after initially supporting the war, I became convince that our soldiers should leave, not necessarily because the war was wrong, but because the South Vietnamese seemed more interested in their own personal gain than in the successful prosecution of the war. I was eligible for the draft, but by that Vietnamization of the war was underway and my number was high enough that I was not called.

It seems like until the Vietnam War generation retires, we will fight this battle again and again in some way. This year, as with Clinton before, it's who went to fight and who avoided the draft. Only this time, the one who avoided the draft was a Democrat and this time he's a Republican.

Although it's a false hope, I wish we could put the Vietnam War behind us.

UPDATE: I think we'll probably hear about this again, especially if Kerry or Clark is the nominee.

New Resources
I've recently added two new websites for the politically inclined. So often, because of a media outlet's bias (note again Ben's list), we might not know the real facts of a story. But two sites I've recently come across may aid us to discover the truth. So far, I've detected no bias at either site, but I'll keep a watch on them.

The two sites are CJR Campaign Desk and FactCheck.org.

Abortion
More than 40 million abortions in the US since Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court.

Dean's Scream (not mine although I'm close)
How many more times do I have to watch Howard Dean's attempt to rally his supporters after his disappointing showing in NH. I fail to see what the news media find so fascinating about it. It was completely logical to me.

Just another example of how the news media depends on polls, personalities and pundits rather than issues.

Martin Luther King Jr.
Race relations have come a long way, much of it attributable to Martin Luther King, Jr's work (along with many others, by the way, Thurgood Marshall being one) in the 50's and 60's. But they are definitely not what they should be. But I don't think its pigmentation that is reason, I think its cultural.

Cynthia Tucker wrote about one major problem; that of Black men's attitude toward crime. She says rightly that injustice does insist, but is not the whole reason. She says that many young blacks view incarceration as a rite of passage.

Maybe even more crucial problem is pointed out by Roger Clegg on National Review Online. He writes, "The major problem facing African Americans as a demographic group today is the fact that seven out of ten of black children are born out of wedlock. Just about any social pathology you can name, especially for boys, correlates with growing up in a home where there is no father."

Unfortunately, many African-American leaders would prefer to blame the government and corporations for the problem. If he had lived, would Dr. King have done the same?

Media and campaigns
Looking at the TV newscasts, what are they talking about when they discuss the Democratic campaigns. Polls. Who's accusing whom of not being a good Democrat. Is anyone asking about the issues? Hardly.

After all, how different are the Democratic candidates? They all want to repeal Bush's tax cuts. They all think Bush screwed up in Iraq. Well, not just Iraq but just about everything. They all want health care for everyone. They all think the economy is in the tank. They all are pro-choice, etc. etc. There may be slight differences as to timing, or extent, but not much.

So what's left for the talking heads to talk about? Who slammed whom? Who's numbers are increasing or decreasing? Who misspoke? Whom can the host get to misspeak? Bah!

Lies, all lies!
The local paper carried an editorial by Lee Dreyfus, former governor of Wisconsin. Here is what he said:

"In a speech at the Pentagon, the president described Iraq's weaponry and said that it was 'a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists.' For all of you who think the President knowingly lied when he said that, let me add a quote from the vice president who said that Hussein had 'stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country.'

"I suppose those of you readers who don't support President Bush or Vice President Cheney simply reject those statements as false, either by their ignorance or design. Let me try to get you to reconsider the charge by pointing out that I was quoting President Clinton and Vice President Gore. The Clinton quote was from a February 1998 speech and the Gore quote from a September 2002 speech."

Margin of Error
Ok could all math-challenged journalists please go here. Journalists talk about so and so "slipping" in the poles (like Howard Dean is "slipping" according to at least Fox News and MSNBC). No they are not slipping because of the Margin of Error. Basically margin of error "means that if you asked a question from this poll 100 times, 95 of those times the percentage of people giving a particular answer would be within 4 points of the percentage who gave that same answer in this poll." For example, here are the results of the last four MSNBC - MSNBC/Reuters Zogby Poll for the top four candidates:

Dean 25% 26% 28% 24%
Gephardt 23% 23% 23% 21%
Kerry 15% 16% 17% 21%
Edwards 14% 12% 14% 15%

So with a margin of error of 4%, Dean's numbers might vary between 21% and 29% based on the first poll. Based on the latest poll, his numbers would vary between 20% and 28%. All of the poll numbers fall in either range. Based on the last poll results, the top four candidates could be in the 19-20% range, hence any candidate could win. Dean numbers could be between 20% and 28%, Gephardt's and Kerry's 17% - 25%, and Edward's 11% to 19%.

According to MSNBC "The latest MSNBC/Reuters Zogby tracking poll shows Dean slipping after gaining over the previous five days of polling in Iowa." Wrong. Dean's numbers are all within the margin of error. The only candidate whose numbers don't fall within the margin of error is John Kerry. Statistically there is NO CHANGE except for Kerry.

And "don't overlook that fact that the margin of error is a 95 percent confidence interval, either. That means that for every 20 times you repeat this poll, statistics say that one time you'll get an answer that is completely off the wall." Kerry's 21% in the latest poll could fit in there.

But Americans (at least the mainstream media) is enthralled with numbers and can't wait for the actual vote to take place, so we poll before and we poll after to try to get a sneak peek.

A Conspiracy?
Obviously, a left-wing conspiracy is causing all these ads for Democratic candidates to appear at the top of my page. :-)

Have a good day!

The Media, a study
Perhaps some of you have seen the report on bias in campaign reporting. Interesting stuff. The full study actually concerns how cable and Internet loom large in fragmented political news universe. Here's the interesting stuff:

First it contrasted how people are learning about the candidates and the campaign from traditional news sources compared to 2000. Less are learning from all tv sources, news magazines and newspapers. More are learning from cable news networks and the internet.

More than one fifth of those under 30, turn to the internet and, get this, Comedy TV shows for their campaign news.

Concerning bias in the media, both Democrats and Republicans feel the media is tilted the other way in coverage. People are evenly split as to whether they believe the media is biased or not.

The study also found that endorsements were more likely to dissuade someone from supporting the candidate as persuading them to do so.

As far as the main source of campaign news, Democrats favor the newspapers and the major networks, while Republicans favor newspapers and the Fox News Channel.

The study also looked at campaign awareness. About a third had heard a lot of Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean. Only one sixth knew a lot about Dean's remarks concerning the Confederate flag.

There is much, much more and perhaps after I've digested it more there will be more to write about.

The conclusions I've gain so far is that the Internet is becoming increasingly important source for news, but that people are less knowledgeable about the facts.

Comments to my posts
As I've written before, I appreciate reading people's commnets to my posts. Ben Sutherland commented on two previous posts here and here. Ben had some good things to say and worth reading. Ben's blog is Building a Better World. His essays are longer than mine and range into his personal life, but I am working my way through them. His blogroll (list of blogs on the left side of his web page) does us all a service by including the particular leanings of some of the major bloggers/new services. I will be including Ben's blog in my blogroll and looking at the others for possible inclusion.

One other thing while we on the subjects of blogs. A very useful tool for me has been Bloglines, a free service that lets you subscribe to RSS feeds of your favorite news feeds and blogs, and Bloglines will monitor updates to those feeds. It is web-based and therefore accessible from any machine that can connect to the Internet.