Hey RJ, have you seen the movie?

Cause I'd be happy to put up with your irritating bitching about it if you have.

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the crucifix this morning.

The post is not about The Passion. It's about movement conservatives' reaction to the movie and their constant whining about being persecuted. Everything needed to back up my statements comes out of the mouths and pens of conservatives, not from the movie.

And no, I'm not seeing the movie. And I'm not reading Mein Kampf, either.

randolph--

i was going to make a joke about your post, something about how this is exactly the kind of thing a liberal christ killer would write. but the last line of your comment changed my mind about kidding around.

you have to know your enemy to fight him, wouldn't you agree? to a certain degree, you demonstrate your understanding of this by reading conservative publications. yet you won't read mein kampf or watch the passion? to fully understand the way conservatives are reacting to the movie, you should watch the movie. in fact, you should read the entire new testament and then watch the movie. if you don't want to contribute to its financial success, sneak in or dowload a bootleg.

i suppose i am still shocked when people refuse to read certain writings or watch certain movies, particularly when jews refuse to read the new testament or mein kampf.

Sneaking in to the passion - nice.

But I think it's OK to not see the movie while still making the point I'm trying to make here. Obviously, I can't say whether it's a good movie, a bad movie, a disgusting movie or what have you, but I think I stand on solid ground when I say the movie is extremely violent, focuses on the last 12 hours of jesus' life and is beloved by conservatives. All of those statements can be backed up with available materials.

For example, I know North Korean prison camps are bad without going to one. To say you have get knee-deep in something before you're allowed to talk about it gets you in Schrodinger's Cat territory. For my purposes, There's a cat in the damn box and everything else is just stoned philosophy undergrads making idle chatter at 4 in the morning..

i wasn't commenting on your post. i was more concerned with your comment about the post.

I need to survey the Baptists back home and see how they're feeling about this. In a very strange way, it's kind of nice to see conservative Evangelicals setting aside the anti-Catholicism that was pretty rampant even when I was in high school youth group. I think I'll also ask my very Catholic best friend from HS what she thinks of this pre-Vatican separatist's portrayal of the death of Christ.

I have no desire to see this movie because a) I know the story quite well already, b) I do all the pondering over the Crucifixion I need to during Stations of the Cross over Lent and on Good Friday, c) I saw a fairly graphic passion play every other Easter as a kid at church and d) I can't bear the thought of someone making money hand over fist by blowing the Crucifixion out of proportion to what was really important about Jesus' life and death, and I certainly do not want to contribute one cent to the piles of Mammon being accumulated. Hint: Good Friday is not the major feast. Easter is.

New word: "Christ-sploitation"

I remember that "The Last Temptation of Christ" was not shown in my hometown due to the community outcry. [/random memory]

‘Passion’ a powerful encounter; Film depicts Jesus’ final days graphically
"Experience Him,” read an advertisement from First Baptist Church in Temple in the theater before the movie. (From my hometown newspaper)

Well, that answers one question. Yes, my home church is definitely using a Catholic's vision of the Crucifixion as a recruitment tool. Ecumenism?

And tickets are sold out for the next few days all over Bell County. I'm sure I'm going to hear plenty about it from my mom, unsolicited.

um. for someone who hates persecution complexes, you seem to have a big one yourself.

How? I didn't say I was threatened by any of their bitching and moaning, just that I'm sick of hearing it.

Campus liberals got COINTELPRO? Do you really think liberals are being abused on college campuses?
And this works both ways: Never in the recorded history of mankind has so numerous, powerful, wealthy and secure a group ever been so utterly convinced of their own persecution and suffering. Liberals make the same arguments. But that doesn't seem to bother you at all.

Margarita, I'm a white girl who was raised Southern Baptist and Republican in Central Texas, where white Southern Baptists have been running the show since the mid-1800's and the Democrats who ran things post-Civil War through the 60's started becoming Republicans once LBJ had the audacity to sign the bill that said that we had to treat blacks and Mexicans like human beings.

Nevertheless, my youth pastors impressed upon us middle and upper-middle class white kids how tough it was to stand up as a Christian, because the "powerful" disdained us and wished to suppress our "authentic" Christianity. When I looked around and saw that most people in authority were conservative white Protestants like myself, and half of the city council and school board were members of my congregation, I started questioning this, which made me question lots of other things. Right now, my birth faith is very powerful in this country.

Jews, on the other hand, given distant and recent history, have good reason to be just a little paranoid. One of my Jewish friends' surname is the least Jewish-sounding name her grandparents could forge their conspicuously Jewish last name into on their passports as they were running away from the Nazis. Others' ancestors came here after they were chased out of their homes during pogroms. Historically, passion plays have made my co-religionists feel freer to vent their anti-Semitism in violent ways, and this one, by all accounts, is extremely violent.

Amanda, you're making a different argument than I am.

This is more where I was going. The "king of all media," Howard Stern: "I hope the irony isn't lost that I look like Jesus being persecuted."

I don't even think Howard Stern counts as a liberal. I am a liberal and I'm not complaining about being persecuted at the moment. There are liberals who are being persecuted (like the woman at Yale whose dorm room was destroyed because she organized an antiwar march), but they're not in the majority. Besides, liberals don't control all the levers of government, like conservatives do. I criticize a specific group of powerful people who whine incessently about being persecuted.

And I'm just saying your bias makes you think that conservatives are the only powerful people who should be held accountable for their "persecution complex."

Oh. And the idea that Catholics (and therefore conservatives) like to think of themselves as Christ, is absurd.

I wasn't talking about catholics. I made it more than clear in the first paragraph that I was talking about how the movie transcended the religious audience to gain political resonance with movement conservatives. Not all conservatives are catholic and not all catholics are conservative.

As for my bias - it's my friggin blog. I found it necissary to point out a bit of hypocracy because the right-wingers certainly aren't doing it themselves. You want to talk about left wing bias, start your own blog. I'll troll on it just like you're doing here.

as it happens, alot of conservatives, but most especially at national review, are catholic. the movie is a very catholic rendition of the crucifixion (could be one reason they like it so much). as to the rest, the post seemed to betray that the disdain you have for conservatives precludes your ability to think clearly and i was just commenting on one of the things i noticed. sorry about that. but if you don't want people to disagree with you here, you shouldn't have a comments section.

Hey. If you want fairness, find a newspaper. If you want opinion, go to a blog. There are plenty of people who will take your side.

"Keep in mind that NR isn’t an explicitly Christian magazine. So why is this movie as big a draw for movement conservatives as it is for Christians?"

Could it have something to do with NR having more Catholics per capita than the Vatican during Holy Week? But far be it from you to know anything about the groups you criticize.

"Never in the recorded history of mankind has so numerous, powerful, wealthy and secure a group ever been so utterly convinced of their own persecution and suffering."

While you do not substantiate the power, wealth or security of the group or their conviction that they are persecuted or suffering, I do find it interesting that you are unable to just see how a Christian might feel living in a land that supports and pays for the killing of unborn children, is rushing toward gay marriage like Micheal Moore toward the pork-rinds section of his local grocery store, that considers the relatively harmless greeting "Merry Christmas" to be so uncouth. But I disagree with your point anyway so that doesn't matter.

"By focusing on the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life and covering up any uplifting message about redemption in so much blood and guts that it gets lost, The Passion turns the story of Jesus into a montage of suffering and little else. Through identifying with the beaten and bloody Jesus, conservatives validate their own persecution complex and get to avoid all of those Christian teachings that might require anything resembling selfless thought towards one’s fellow man."

I am sure you criticized Mystic River on the same grounds that it didn't follow the story after the parade or Triplets of Belleville for not telling us about the young bicyclist's life after his great escape. WHATEVER.

"Conservatives control all three branches of government, and if you believe their rhetoric, they will for the foreseeable future."

Memo to the intellectual giant at DCSOB, there is actually a difference between conservatives and Republicans. For instance, increasing government program discretionary spending by 14% last year -- the highest since LBJ, is not exactly conservative.

And if the Supreme Court that has voted to allow gay marriage is conservative, that is sort of news to me. But hey, maybe you know something I don't.

"They gripe about the media, but they do so on television and radio shows heard and seen nationwide, and in dozens of openly partisan newspapers such as the Washington Times and the New York Post."

I'll see you my WT and NYP and throw in Fox News for the NYT, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN. Since we're so powerful with our media, I'm sure you'll be happy to make the trade . . . right? Oh wait, that's right, you not only have all the newspapers and tv stations, you also have all the high-school-drop-out/foreign-policy-experts in Hollywood and on the television. Poor, poor you.

"They complain endlessly about “crushing of dissent” on campuses every time one of their newspapers gets attacked for running a blatantly racist article. But let’s look at the whole picture: Campus conservatives get hundreds of thousands of dollars to start campus publications, attend conferences and hire speakers."

Yo, darling Randolph, first of all you lose your liberal creds when you come out for the violation of the first amendment -- you say newspapers are "attacked." Attacked is one way of putting it, another way is all of their newspapers get stolen when they don't adopt your party line. If being liberal means you're for censorship, I'm not with you.

"They hold so-called “affirmative action bake sales” at colleges, a veiled way of saying that they are too good for their school and would have ended up somewhere better had the system been fair. No wonder they don’t elicit much sympathy from other students."

First, darling, if you are making the case of how powerful conservatives are, let me give you a little bit of advice: crying about bake sales will never make you seem terribly legit. GROW SOME and come back to the fight with some more information.

"they see themselves as the whipped and crucified Jesus, not the corrupt and brutal Roman imperialists."

While you again provide no substantiation for your opinion, I think this is actually a good point. Christians should see themselves as the brutal Roman imperialists who inflicted on Christ His suffering. Too often they think of themselves as the people who would have given Jesus aid. Just not so.

in case anyone is curious about howard stern's political affiliation, he has a long history of involvement with the libertarian party, including a brief fling with running for governor of NY as a libertarian party candidate. (of course, in reference to randolph's comment, being a libertarian does not rule out being a liberal.)

Ummm, bunnie:

1. Not being persecuted is not the same as being forced to coexist with people who disagree with you. Don't like abortion? Don't have one. Don't like gay marriage? Marry a member of the opposite sex (or nobody at all). What you're really complaining about is your inability to force your views on everyone else.

2. Criticizing Mystic River or any other movie for its historical innacuracy is fine. Most stories are nearly impossible to move from one medium to another without making some changes some people will find questionable. The movie is just that - a movie. It just so happens that people of a certain ideological bent like it and I think that explains a lot about them. Nothing more, nothing less.

3. I'm not crying about bake sales. People can sell any foodstuff they want to whomever they want at whatever price they want, as far as I'm concerned. I'm saying the bake sales are a big conservative pity-party by whiners who think they should have gone to a better college were it not for those pesky minorities.

Randolph,

You wrote, "Don't like abortion? Don't have one. Don't like gay marriage? Marry a member of the opposite sex (or nobody at all)."

To that, let's add, "Don't like rape? Don't commit one. Don't like the abduction of children? Don't kidnap."

I mean, I'm sure that with your intellect, you can figure out that if abortion takes the life of a child - and it does -- then it should not be permitted.

Side note: Every person in America knows that abortion is wrong. They know it takes the life of a child and ends it. They know it is devastating for women. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it. You can debate whether it should be legal, but we all know it's wrong.

In any case, I happen to have fairly unique views on gay marriage. I believe that the states should not confer benefits or penalties to people based on their marital status. So while I'm not for state sponsorship of gay marriage, I'm not for state sponsorship of real marriage either.

But I am at least humble enough to realize that destabilizing the foundational unit of society *might* have some negative consequences that make people uncomfortable.

And I know enough about homosexuality to know that it does not retain monogomy -- a key part in marriage -- as a cultural value. So gay marriage sort of redefines the word marriage in more way than one.

Point being, the whole gay thing as a movement is INCREDIBLY recent. We went from not realizing George Michael was even gay like 7 years ago to calling for destruction of a major tenet of Western civilization today.

What's the fucking rush? I mean, slow down, people. Let's figure this out slowly and deliberatively and thoughtfully.

Also, I'm glad to know that the conservative bake sales are having the desired effect. They are the best analogy to how ridiculous affirmative action is -- in general -- and yet liberals hate it. You can not love affirmative action for college admissions but hate it for cookies. THat's inconsistent and betrays the idiocy of racism -- no matter who it benefits.

Side note: When I was accepted into an extremely prestigious school, one of the toughest in America to get into. And when I was accepted EARLY to that school, most of my high school chums assumed that I was chosen because I was a female.

This despite my one-answer shy of a perfect standardized test, high grade point average, innumerable-Rushmore-style activities, and athletic prowess (it was a military academy).

I can't stand affirmative action because it serves to make people think that women and minorities are not capable of accomplishing good work on their own.

So you liberals can condescend to us poor minorities and women -- but the fact is we'd rather you take your liberal guilt elsewhere.

Again, though, as I said -- glad the bake sales are having the desired effect.

Hey Bunnie, are you serious? I mean do you see what you're writing? I was content to let Randolph spar with you, because he's much angrier than I am. I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, until they say things like this:

And I know enough about homosexuality to know that it does not retain monogomy -- a key part in marriage -- as a cultural value. So gay marriage sort of redefines the word marriage in more way than one.

Grow up. The assertions about excessive homosexual promiscuity are as assinine as an assertion that heterosexuals are committed to monogomy. And frankly I think you're treading a fine line between personal opinion and blatant misrepresentation. Spread the christian right propaganda elsewhere.

The gay rights movement as "incredibly recent"? The Stonewall Riots took place in 1969. Just because you only became aware of homosexuality when George Michael offered a cop a blowjob in a bathroom, doesn't mean that they didn't exist.

Wake the hell up. Not everyone believes abortion is wrong. But YOU apparently know I feel otherwise. And YOU know the gay community, and their values. And you want people to have time to get used to the idea of a gay marriage. Well people still might not be comfortable (and some still aren't) with the idea of interracial marriages were it not for the civil rights movement forcing the issue.

Sell your morals somewhere else. I'm not buying.

Excuse me, Bunnie. "And I know enough about homosexuality to know that it does not retain monogomy -- a key part in marriage" You clearly don't know much about homosexuality. You don't see lots of married gays on TV, no, because TV caters to its audience, who like to see their steroetypes, including those of screaming slutty queens, reaffirmed.

If gays didn't value monogamy, we wouldn't want to get married.

You know nothing about "homosexuality" because you watch "Queer as Folk" or "Will and Grace," or because you met that guy at a party who wouldn't have sex with you because he was gay.

...And bunnie, it's not self-evident that abortion is wrong. If it was, then nobody would have one.

... and if the reason for an affirmitive action bake sale is to piss off liberals, then all's well, but I have a feeling that it's to convince people of the wrongness of the system.

... and I can't believe I'm arguing with someone called bunnie.

Wow... what do gays have to do with this, other than definitely a group that has very legitimate cause for feeling persecuted.

And the rest of Bunnie's first screed, it's the conservative talking points I mouthed years 8 through 20 of my life and saw in NR, which I read religiously from about age 12 to 17 (got a boyfriend and an expanded social life spring of junior year). I never thought of it as having any sort of religious orientation (even though WFB is a devout Catholic); honestly, I read it to get a less-religious viewpoint on politics than I was getting from the rest of my surroundings.

I, too, got questions about whether my being female gave me a leg up in getting into my fairly competitive engineering school and then to my jobs in the software industry.

At first, I was angry about affirmative action.

But I made my peace with it at a summer job filled with slovenly, stupid white men who bitched constantly about how women and minorities were getting the good assignments and promotions, not reflecting upon the fact that they were slovenly and stupid and that perhaps those women and minorities who managed to break into the Old Boys Club with a bit of a boost might have performed more satisfactorily than they who were born with the proper skin tone and gender to succeed in Central Texas. People who really want to question whether being female compensated for some lack of merit would just start making insinuations that I'd flirted and/or slept with someone to get where I was, if there weren't AA to blame. AA just gives them a much more polite excuse to whine.

Not so coincidentally, this was also the job that changed my mind on the existence of sexual harrassment.

I suppose it's possible to believe abortion should be permitted, in the same way that people genuinely believed that apartheid was good for Black South Africans or Micheal Jackson believes that sleeping with children is good.

I mean, maybe you do genuinely believe it.

But you say that if it were self-evident that abortion is wrong, than no-one would have one. I guess that means we will see no more genocide, incest or Fox reality tv, right? Oh wait, people do things that they know are wrong all the time . . .

And as for the bake sales, perhaps you did this earlier in your blog, but you have not provided a reason for why they are wrong. You cast aspersions and judged the intentions of the folks throwing them, but you did not make a case for why they are wrong (that could not also be made for affirmative action in general).

As for the *yawn* homosexual marriage thing . . .

Why do we have to pretend that reality doesn't exist?

Gay men have significantly higher rates of sexual partners/year or per lifetime than heteros. Like, way, way way more.

Monogomay is not a cultural value for homosexuals. Freedom is. Monogomy isn't.

And whoever refuted my argument that the gay movement is recent with something in the year '1969' has got to get some motherfucking perspective on history. I realize that if you were born in the 1970s (as I was) that 1969 can seem like a long time ago because, like, that was before you were born. But in the grander scheme of things, in the history of humanity, it's really quite recent. And when you are talking about changing the basic unit of society that the loose "we" have been arranged upon for the last, oh, 6,000 years or whatever, I think waiting a couple of years will not kill us.

We're talking about introducing man-on-man sanctioned marriage less than a year after the Lawrence decision.

I already told you silly-willies that I am not for state-sanctioned marriage of any kind == so if you think I'm coming at this from some moralistic stance, you're wrong.

But I think some understanding of the role marriage has played in society would be good. You all seem to think that marriage is a very important cultural and social institution -- so much that you want homosexuals to take part in it. I agree. I agree so much that I think we should be careful in how we move forward.

If my argument -- urging caution and thoughtfulness -- gets you guys this upset, you clearly are not prepared to be engaged in this battle.

Amanda, I've seen so many women who resort to liberalism at the first signs that men are jerks.

(News flash: some men are jerks.)

And I think that's sad, because it plays into their hands. They want us to believe that they have so much power and we need help to overcome them.

Women rock. Dwelling on this victimization and woe-is-me crap makes you look like Naomi Wolfe.

You're stronger than that. Fight back and move on. Show men that we are strong and their little limp-dicked attempts at harrassment are laughable.

And get a job on your own merits. Sure, employers can be awful and they can hire only people they know who went to their schools, etc.

But resorting to affirmative action is the equivalent of getting your older brother to beat up that girl in science class who made fun of you.

Bunnie...the gay rights movement isn't even as young as Stonewall. Read history. Can anyone say "Oscar Wilde?"
I'd like to know how you get your "facts" about gay men and monogamy. You statement about gays having more parteners per year is probably based on any one of a few studies, done in the 80's or early 90's, which reflect a skewed portion of the population (ie, the NYC and SF club scenes) and aren't realistic. More recent, better designed studies have show this to be a myth outside of a small subset of people who go out drinking and drugging every night. The same subset exists in straight circles.

Oh bunnie bunnie bunnie,
Now that Amanda, Mike and Chris have joined in, I'll keep this one short, sticking just to your misunderstanding of what I said instead of your narrow, narrow worldview and your belief that you know everything. Especially since you just insinuated that Amanda got her job because of affirmative action. She loves it when people say that. :)

Note how I didn't make any judgement on whether the bake sales are right or wrong. Just that they take the form of complaining - either that they belong somewhere better or that their minority/woman classmates don't deserve to be there. It's condescending and self-pitying. Drag out your facts. Propose an end to legacy admissions, why doncha?

Oh bunnie bunnie bunnie,
Now that Amanda, Mike and Chris have joined in, I'll keep this one short, sticking just to your misunderstanding of what I said instead of your narrow, narrow worldview and your belief that you know everything. Especially since you just insinuated that Amanda got her job because of affirmative action. She loves it when people say that. :)

Note how I didn't make any judgement on whether the bake sales are right or wrong. Just that they take the form of complaining - either that they belong somewhere better or that their minority/woman classmates don't deserve to be there. It's condescending and self-pitying. Drag out your facts. Propose an end to legacy admissions, why doncha?

Did I say *being* gay was a new phenomenon? Or did I say the gay rights movement was young.

Yes, Oscar Wilde was gay. Newsflash.

IN ANY CASE,

The fact that male homosexuals have, on average, more sexual partners than male heterosexuals, on average is not really disputed.

I'll try to find my Sex Survey book that came out in 1994 from some U. of Chicago researchers (probably the most definitive sex survey ever) but I'm sure you could find some information on the internet.

Best.

a) I don't know Amanda from Adam. I was just making comments about how women, in general, should be proud and not victims.

b) your point completely confuses me. You are saying 1) you are not making any judgement on whether the bake sales are right or wrong 2) you're just *observing* that they take the form of complaining and 3) and then you are saying that complaining is condescending and self-pitying.

If this is the depth of your thought on these and you're not even ballsy enough to take a stand against them, I would suggest you not bother blogging about them.

3) As for legacy admissions, I could not care less what private universities do. If they want all girls, that's fine. If they want all legacies, that's fine. If they think they'd be better off by having the best, most qualified candidates regardless of sex, ethnicity or daddy's last name -- I think that's better.
But when PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES who by definition should not be discriminating -- make decisions on whose qualified based on the color of someone's skin or the presence of a vulva . . . that is discomfiting.

Best.

I'm finding this very amusing. Don't really have an opinion on the movie. We can err on the side of competence for Amanda. Affirmative action probably didn't have much to do with her job acceptance. But engineering? I'd bet she's a porker.

My point about Wilde was his trial, and discrimination against him. I guess if by "movement" you mean a concerted, internationalized group of talking points, then no, there was no "movement" in his time. But there was a struggle.

The U Chicago survey is not bad...the problem is the way you interpret it. It's very easy to look at isolated data and support just about any conclusion (I help people avoid doing this for a living), and your statement, "male homosexuals have, on average, more sexual partners than male heterosexuals," is a perfect example.

Gay men may have, in total, more partners than straight, but that doesn't say they don't eventually "settle down," just like stright guys do. (frankly, the best explanation for gay guys getting more play than straights is that women often take more convincing; you walk up to an available guy and say "sex. now." he's pretty likely to say "woohooo!")

And for every slutty club queen I know, there's a couple of older guys who've been together ten years or more I'd rather be seen with.

The thing about survey data, moreso than any other type, is that it's got to be interpreted properly.

I think you proved my point, Michael.
I'm off to go try and up the figures for my hetero sisters.

I'm not sure how I did that. And after all this, I still don't get why people are so bothered by gay marriage. If you think yourselves superior because of more percieved monogamy, then why discourage it in others? Oh yeah, then you'd have to get off your high horse.

Is the high horse I'm on the one where I said I was going to go try and increase my number of sexual partners?

Because, morally speaking, that's not such a high horse.

You all need to chill.

Gotta agree with bunnie on one point here. We all need to chill.