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May 5, 2005 - April 28, 2005

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

JEFFREY REDUX.   Some of us decided to see what all the fuss about, so we departed from our usual custom of waiting for the DVD and went to the theater for a showing of The Passion. We are OUTRAGED. A single bag of popcorn and a Pepsi cost ten bucks. You don't see the NYT and the Washington Post screaming about that, do you?

Beyond that, we confess that contrary to our expectations there is indeed a reason for concern about The Passion's likelihood of inciting bigotry and prejudice. In fact, we're actually alarmed that the average (i.e., lowlife Christian) Americans who watch this movie will engage in acts of violence against those of Italian descent. Yes, the pharisees  were politically nefarious on screen, but they weren't the ones who whipped Christ with metal-studded lashes, and whipped him, and whipped him, and whipped him, and whipped him… for what seemed like hours in the middle of the picture. They were Romans, a.k.a. ancestral Italians. The same ones who kept bashing Christ to the ground when he was trying to carry the cross, the same ones who sledgehammered the spikes through his hands, dislocated his shoulders on the cross, and then flung him around just for fun when he was helplessly nailed to the instrument of his death. These guys made the Sopranos look sweet by comparison.

We're deeply worried about this. Shouldn't the New York Times express at least a little concern? Can't they dig up a Mel Gibson second cousin twice-removed who once made an offhand remark about 'wops'? They've simply got to try harder. It's clearly time to open up a second front in the war against Mel (All together now: Crucify him! Crucify him! Crucify him!) before the box office totals hit the $200 million mark and the secular intelligentsia perish of a collective stroke. That would be just terrible, wouldn't it? Jeffrey would be frightfully upset. Well, wouldn't he?
 

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