July 31, 2006
— Ace ...you really have to check out the Gospel of St. Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache, whose every second post is about the gob-smacking vileness of Mel Gibson and the "Christianist right" and their "theocon agenda" (and also the apparently stealth-antisemite conservative Jews who have made an alliance with same).
I suppose he's entitled to an I-Was-Right-You-Were-Wrong victory lap. I'm hardly above that myself. Not by a long shot.
But one lasting three days long and counting? Further, I'm not sure, completely, how right he was. While Charles Krauthammer had something of a point in noting that Satan usually seems to be intermixed with Jews in The Passion, it's sort of difficult to film the story of Christ's crucifixion without noting the presence of the Jews at some point. It's not as if, in order to make the story less offensive, you can set Christ's life in the milleu of Hollywood's recent favorite non-complaining ethnic heavies, the Serbs. Just as you couldn't avoid offending Egyptians by filming the story of Exodus with Moses leading his people away from the evil clutches of Hans Gruber and his dozen German mercenary henchmen.
The Bible kinda defines the term "canonical."
There is an inherent problem of political incorrectness, impossible to finesse, in any film about Christ's life, and of course he's death. There's really no good way to avoid some people taking it the wrong way-- blaming the Jews, etc.
Further, Sullivan spent 90% of his time, if I recall correctly, screaming about the masochism of the film, not its antisemitism. I tend to agree that, as regards the violence, there was too much of it, but I say that not from a prudish point of view but from a cinematic one: the repetitiveness of the violence tended to take me out of the movie, and remind me I was in fact watching a movie. Still, it was an artistic choice, and an easily defended one, if one wanted, as Gibson apparently did, to highlight the human suffering borne by Jesus in order to display the greatness of His deed.
Didn't work for me. It did seem to work for others. And so it goes.
I just seem to remember Sullivan's attack being chiefly about the goriness of the film, and its supposed sexualization and fetishization of agony and torture, rather than about its supposed antisemitism. I could be wrong, but to the extent Sullivan wrote on the antisemitic tip, it seemed, as so much of Sullivan's hyperbolic sort of rhetoric is, opportunistic.
At any rate, Sullivan is one of his more fulsome of many (many, many) recent freak-outs. Gibson deserves to be castigated for his virulent anti-semitism, and booze is hardly a defense, and I've so castigated him, and confessed error in previously giving him the benefit of the doubt (despite somewhat sketchy answers to questions about the Holocaust), as have most others. And yet Sullivan continues hitting the story every other post not to advance it at all but to simply say, again and again, "See? I was right!"
That's not really blogging about political events; that's purely personal score-settling. Again, sure, I wouldn't begrudge him some crowing; but honestly, at some point it has to stop.
Hat tip to The Malcontent, who writes:
Sullivan despised the Passion of the Christ. In his months-long railing against the film, we saw the first blurry outlines of his torture philosophy that would spring forth and devour whole his writing and thinking. Like the movie, dislike the movie. Its to every individuals taste. I thought it was ok. ....And yet, Sullivan hated it, and now off he goes on another personal jihad that seems far more wrapped up in his personal religious and philosophical issues than anything else. Were probably lucky Gibson didnt kill himself while driving under the influence, lest we be subjected to a week-long festival where Andrew pisses all over his grave (see: Lay, Ken).
Sullivan a great gay conservative writer and thinker? Nope. Just an increasingly unhinged asshole, and he reveals it more and more with each passing day.
I never thought I'd ever, ever write these words, but Sullivan has somehow managed to coax them from my fingertips:
Dude, get a grip. As noxious as Gibson's comments were, this story is not as important as Abu Ghraib.
By the way, St. Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache seems to have a habit of posting stuff without attribution or hat-tip that showed up on other people's blogs a few days before. Except if it's one of his bosom chums, like, ahem, you know who.
It's very possible that Sullivan just gets this stuff in emails; but then, why no hat-tip to the emailer? As the Malcontent is a gay conservative writer who frequently slams on St. Andrew, I'm curious if he got this YouTube video from the Malcontent, who posted it two days before him.
The thing is, no knock on Malcontent, but it's only eh amusing, so I'm just wondering how it could have become such a must-see email-blast viral video as to have caught Sullivan's attention independently.
Forgive my suspicions, but this seems to happen a lot.
Sullivan is one of the worst bloggers out there when it comes to hat-tips and links. I get a lot of links sent to me, but if the author includes a hat-tip himself, I'll almost always hat-tip to the tipster's actual source. Does St. Andrew do the same?
I don't know. Sure doesn't seem like it. Apparently, unlike every other blogger on the Internet, Sullivan gets almost all of his tips independently... or from Belgravia Dispatch or Glenn Greenwald.
Why Not? Seems as good a time as any to repost Allah's greatest photoshop, evah:
Can we add a color beyond the red? Is infrared a color?
Update: If St. Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache wants to be a moral arbiter on anti-semitic remarks, it really would behoove him to follow his own advice and stop constantly slandering "Christianists."
I really don't think Gibson's and Sullivan's comments are quite equivalent. They're not related so closely they couldn't get married, but they do share common blood.
Posted by: Ace at
07:03 PM
| Comments (23)
Post contains 1038 words, total size 6 kb.
Posted by: Rightwingsparkle at July 31, 2006 07:29 PM (Y7MT2)
Misconstrued or not-- you're one of the select few.
Posted by: ace at July 31, 2006 07:30 PM (h7Mal)
goriness of the film, and its supposed sexualization and fetishization
of agony and torture...
It looks like memory is all you'll have to go on because his archives from before January of this year have gone missing. The link to them just goes back to the front page.
Posted by: Bill B at July 31, 2006 07:32 PM (q6JHl)
Posted by: B Moe at August 01, 2006 01:33 AM (fpJc1)
He's very, very petty. I know it's a shock to hear it, but somehow we'll have to carry on with Andy Approval.
Posted by: Robbie at August 01, 2006 01:40 AM (tKkIh)
Still, Mel will have to put up with the censure his vile comments have solicited. Anti-Semitism cannot be excused away by his being drunk when he said them.
After hearing St. Andrew and the left bitch about Neo-Cons/jews in the administration for years, they are the last people who can criticize Mel Gibson. They are guilty of the same thing, they just hide it under the code words of the left. How many times have you heard some stupid lefty say "Jewish lobby" or "AIPAC". It all leads to the same place, anti-semitism. Mel just said clearly what most of the moonbat left was thinking. I find it telling that most of the left is using this as a bat to beat up on Christians, instead of heaping scorn on Mel's anti-semitic commentary.
Posted by: Stormy70 at August 01, 2006 02:37 AM (SXQle)
You actually stumbled onto something I hadn't been able to put into words until now: Even when one is correct, which I think you probably were on the Greenwald thing, fatigue can set in when that horse gets beaten well past its demise. The left harps on the same things day after day after day, and I believe the general American public has tuned them out out of fatigue. I mean, when Jay Leno and David Letterman mention Karl Rove for the 20th night in a row, people laugh out of deference, because he must be someone to be laughed at if those giants of comedy keep mentioning him. But that doesn't mean ythat they have a clue about who he is or what he does.
Anyway, feel free to go after whomever you please, but remember even we don't always know who you are talking about. And keep up the good work!
Posted by: John F Not Kerry at August 01, 2006 03:15 AM (Ffvoi)
Posted by: John F Not Kerry at August 01, 2006 03:19 AM (Ffvoi)
Yeah, I agree, Sully banged the drum on POTC over the violence, sexualizing it. He may have thought Gibson was a raving Jew-hater but he didn't have the guts to make that point at the time.
infrared is a color. as is ultra-violet
and 'violet' looks like 'violent'. ultra-violent.
bonus.
Posted by: Dave in Texas at August 01, 2006 04:23 AM (pzen5)
Posted by: Kevin at August 01, 2006 04:35 AM (++0ve)
what the...? Kevin, did you have a stroke or something towards the end of that post?
Posted by: wiserbud at August 01, 2006 04:52 AM (AQGeh)
Posted by: monsoon at August 01, 2006 05:04 AM (Fyntg)
The sad thing about it is that I've got a number of friends in a similar boat who are just trying to make every day count, without delusions of immortality and grandeur. They're enjoying what time they have left, and making it count by being great people... not by being loud, delusional, overwrought, and vicious.
Ah, poor Andy... what an insufferable prick.
Oh yeah- Mel. Everybody's got their warts, but this is one big fucking wart. But like Stormy said, this is exactly what the moonbat left is thinking... they're just passive-aggressively using code words for it... like inner-city mothers, undocumented workers, freedom fighters, and so forth. Mel called down the shit on himself, pissing off his supporters on the right, and hanging himself like a damn pinata for the left to beat on. There's no excuse for ignorant anti-Semitism, but he gets to roll an extra d20 twice to add on damage for outright stupidity. A ton of good works, all torpedoed by a bunch of dumbass remarks. Fool.
tmi3rd
Posted by: tmi3rd at August 01, 2006 05:16 AM (5Z2JP)
So to me at least, Sully's "takedown" of Gibson seems analogous to the Left's "takedown" of "The Nech", i.e. taking heroic photos posing with the 5" sunfish you just caught and then stuffing it and mounting it on the wall.
Or put another way - when you haven't got anything to cheer about, go crazy over the trivia.
Posted by: Scott at August 01, 2006 05:43 AM (f8958)
Posted by: Scotian at August 01, 2006 06:53 AM (FP5y4)
Posted by: alex at November 11, 2006 07:50 PM (RgGtb)
Posted by: mkv to dvd converter at July 22, 2009 01:59 AM (2i772)
MKV to MP4 Converter，you have the chance to enjoy MKV Converter videos on your iPod, iTouch, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, PS3, Xbox, mobile phone and other devices.
Posted by: mkv converter at July 31, 2009 08:30 PM (Q3kPj)
Posted by: cdsc at September 23, 2009 04:01 AM (i/rOP)
Posted by: adsds at January 24, 2010 02:57 AM (bYUmd)
Posted by: adsds at January 24, 2010 02:57 AM (bYUmd)
Posted by: lucu at April 26, 2010 11:02 AM (ceTs+)
Posted by: killua at April 02, 2011 02:25 AM (pVO8m)
Powered by Minx 1.1.4-pink.
