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Times Watch for
February 20, 2004
The Religious Right Is Rising (Again)
Does Mel Gibson's new movie signal a coming revival of the religious right? That's the angle Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley takes in her rather scattershot Friday story on the controversy over Gibson's soon-to-be-released film "The Passion of the Christ."
Stanley thinks the real story is being missed: "In this latest battle in the nation's culture wars, the unspoken question is, 'Who controls Hollywood?' Critics worry that Mr. Gibson's film, which has already been embraced by Christian preachers as a tool of evangelization, will reawaken old prejudices--not that Jews are guilty of killing Christ, but that Jewish liberals control the entertainment and media industries and have imposed a secular, left-leaning bias on movies and television."
Surely Stanley doesn't really think that all concern about liberal media bias can be boiled down to anti-Jewish prejudice?
After noting that many films are considered offensive by some group or other, Stanley frets about the rise of the Times' old bugbear, the religious right, and strains to work CBS' biased movie about the Reagans (which Stanley actually kind of liked) into the mix: "Yet at the moment Mr. Gibson is viewed not as an artist flouting convention and mainstream Hollywood orthodoxies, but as a lobbyist for the fundamentalist religious movement in the United States at a time when its clout is unmistakably on the rise. Under pressure from right-wing groups that threatened a boycott of advertisers, CBS last November was driven to cancel 'The Reagans,' a biographical mini-series about President Ronald Reagan and his first lady, Nancy. In the same way that right-wing groups rose up to protest what they predicted would be an unfair portrait of Mr. Reagan, some Jewish groups and liberal organizations complained about Mr. Gibson's message long before they had a chance to see his film."
For the rest of Stanley on Mel Gibson's "Passion," click here.
• Anti-Semitism | Mel Gibson | Movies | "The Passion" | "The Reagans" | Religion | Alessandra Stanley
Elaine Sciolino's solid look at a European Union conference on anti-Semitism is stained by this puzzler: "Much of the debate focused on finding a definition for the new wave of anti-Semitic acts and statements that have swept through Europe since the Israeli crackdown on Palestinians in 2000."
Sciolino's Friday story doesn't mention Israel's "crackdown" came as a result of the start of the current Palestinian intifada of attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli citizens, terrorism which wreaks death on Israelis to this day.
For the rest of Sciolino's take on the conference, click here.
• Anti-Semitism | Israel | Palestinians | Elaine Sciolino
Reporter Neil MacFarquhar on Friday takes a look at Al Hurra, a U.S.-sponsored satellite TV station that broadcasts news and documentaries in Arabic. "The station is being pilloried in the Arab press as a propaganda arm of the United States government, trying to gloss over America's anti-Arab bias," he writes, before really hitting where it hurts: "Analysts have labeled it 'Fox News in Arabic' and a spiritual descendant of TV Martí, the American government's anti-Castro broadcasts in Cuba."
He doesn't explain the criticism further, though for the paper's most loyal liberal readers, he probably doesn't have to. The implicit suggestion--it's not good to be compared to Fox News--is clear.
MacFarquhar (who back in October said Hamas and Islamic Jihad had been "labeled" terrorist groups by Israel and the U.S., as if there was room for argument) gives ink to critics who consider Bush's push for democracy hypocritical, considering U.S. support for Israel and the American invasion of Iraq: "Much criticism of Al Hurra in the Arab press and among people interviewed on the streets focused on the vast gap in perception between Washington and the Arab world. While President Bush spoke about the need to foster freedom and democracy in the Arab world in his interview, for example, critics say he has done nothing concrete to encourage Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to end Israel's occupation of Arab lands and note that the United States has now occupied Iraq."
For more of MacFarquhar on Washington's Arabic-language TV, click here.
• Al Hurra | Arabs | Israel | Neil MacFarquhar | Palestinians | Television
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org