| About | |
| Contact Us | |
| Articles | |
| Topic Index | |
| Reports | |
| Quotes | |
| On the Web | |
| Links | |
| TW Tracker | |
| Support | |
Times Watch for
March 8, 2004
Gibson's Movie a "Joy Ride for Sadomasochists"
At long last, Frank Rich sees "The Passion of Christ," a movie on which he has expended thousands of words over the last several months--all of them harshly critical. But that's nothing compared to the vitriol he unleashes in his Sunday "review."
"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," Rich writes, before approvingly quoting an attack on the movie by Christopher Hitchens (infamous for calling Mother Teresa "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud").
Rich writes: "If 'The Passion' is a joy ride for sadomasochists, conveniently cloaked in the plain-brown wrapping of religiosity, does that make it bad for the Jews? Not necessarily. As a director, Mr. Gibson is no Leni Riefenstahl. His movie is just too ponderous to spark a pogrom on its own--in America anyway….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."
Then Rich goes even further: "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."
Rich then bizarrely tries to fashion a campaign issue out of "The Passion." He writes: "The vilification of Jews by Mr. Gibson, his film and some of his allies, unchallenged by his media enablers, is not happening in a vacuum. We are in the midst of an escalating election-year culture war in which those of 'faith' are demonizing so-called 'secularists' (for which read any Jews critical of Mr. Gibson and their fellow travelers, liberals)."
Rich doesn't offer any evidence or examples of this alleged demonization, simply letting his accusation dangle as an all-purpose slur.
For the rest of Rich's diatribe, click here.
• Anti-Semitism | Mel Gibson | Movies | "The Passion" | Religion | Frank Rich
The headline to Dexter Filkins' Saturday's story from Iraq on the first botched attempt to sign a constitution calls out the U.S. for failure: "Iraqi Shiites, in a Blow to U.S., Fail to Sign Temporary Charter." Filkins' article carries the same tone, calling the refusal by Shiite leaders to sign the document "a major embarrassment for American officials."
Come Monday morning, things were much better in Baghdad, though you wouldn't know it from the Times' muted response. This is how Filkins' lead story opens: "Shiite leaders said Sunday that they would sign the country's interim constitution on Monday, signaling an end to the deadlock that had threatened to undermine the transfer of sovereignty by the American-led occupation force to the Iraqi people scheduled for later this year." The headline merely states: "Top Shiites Drop Their Resistance to Iraqi Charter."
So, if the temporary delay of signing the unprecedented constitution was a "major embarrassment," shouldn't its actual signing two days later be considered at least some kind of triumph? Apparently not at the Times. Perusing stories on the signing by Filkins and the Washington Post, blogger David Adesnik concludes "professional journalists have a remarkable habit of overlooking their own short-sightedness."
• Dexter Filkins | Iraq Constitution | Iraq War
David Halbfinger makes Saturday's front page with his story on the budding Kerry campaign, "Kerry's Shifts: Nuanced Ideas or Flip-Flops?"
Though much of the article is a useful primer on Kerry's shifting positions on war, education, and the death penalty, Halbfinger is on shakier ground when he notes: "Of course, it is just some of these aspects of Mr. Kerry--hunter, prosecutor, deficit hawk, war veteran--which now give him an answer to suggestions that he is nothing more than a 'Massachusetts liberal' in the mold of Michael S. Dukakis, whom he served as lieutenant governor."
Besides dubiously defining the big-spending Kerry as a "deficit hawk," Halbfinger suggests his liberalism is up for debate--even though Kerry was named the most liberal senator of all in a recent National Journal study.
For the rest of Halbfinger's story on Kerry, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | David Halbfinger | Sen. John Kerry | Labeling Bias
Will Rest of Media Pounce on Kerry's "Gay" Gaffe?
David Halbfinger follows John Kerry on the campaign trail to a black college in Mississippi. Halbfinger's Monday story from the campus of Tougaloo College opens with Kerry as versatile fighter: "Senator John Kerry showed he could preach from the pulpit one minute and throw political punches the next, as he courted support on Sunday in one of the most staunchly Republican and deeply religious states in the South, where George W. Bush won 58 percent of the vote four years ago."
Halbfinger then notes how Kerry mangled an anecdote about a Texas crime in which a black man was murdered by white racists: "Then Mr. Kerry drew a connection between racism and antigay crime, noting the 1998 murder of a gay college student, Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, but mangling a reference to James Byrd Jr., a black man who was dragged to his death the same year in Jasper, Tex., by three men including John William King, all of whom were convicted of murder. 'Let me tell you something, when Matthew Shepard gets crucified on a fence in Wyoming only because he was gay," he said, 'when Mr. King gets dragged behind of a truck down in Texas by chains and his body is mutilated only because he's gay--I think that's a matter of rights in the United States of America.'"
In an unusual twist, Halbfinger's piece is actually more detailed than the local paper's version. The Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi's statewide newspaper, elides the gross gaffe from Kerry's statement.
Times stories that portray Bush and Republicans in unflattering light traditionally have a viral effect on the media, spreading from paper to paper and promptly making the evening news. Will Kerry's embarrassing "outing" of James Byrd travel the same route?
For the rest of Halbfinger with Kerry in Mississippi, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Gaffes | Gay Marriage | Sen. John Kerry
Monday's lead editorial on Bush's
foreign policy again fronts the old "imminent threat" canard: "The Bush administration's case for invading Iraq was based on a supposedly imminent threat from Iraqi unconventional weapons. No imminent threat was found."
As Times Watch has pointed out again and again, Bush never claimed Iraq posed an "imminent threat."
This is what Bush said on the matter in his 2003 State of the Union: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"
For the full editorial, click here.
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org