Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

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I was all revved up to respond to this paragraph from Keith Urbahn on The Passion:

Charges of ?anti-Semitism? have been conveniently tossed around by those who object to the film?s portraying of Jews in a negative light. Ironically, many of these guardians of religious sensitivity are the same who defended the desecration of the Virgin Mary in elephant dung at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the name of freedom of expression, and now with the tables turned, condemn the film as rabidly anti-Semitic and a breach of the norms of decency.

But it turns out James Kirchick, with whom I agree on few things, has beat me to it:

First off, there is a major difference in defending an art museum’s first amendment right to display whatever art it chooses, and advocating that the museum be forced to close the exhibit altogether. I defy Keith to find a statement from Abraham Foxman or any of the other major Jewish leaders he accuses, demanding that the government prevent Gibson from displaying his art, which is what Catholic leaders urged, and ultimately convinced, Mayor Giuliani to do in the “Sensation” episode. Second, as I remember, the “Sensation” exhibit was essentially an elephant-dung stained portrait of Mary, created by a Catholic. However tasteless that piece of “artwork” may be, it does not compare to a Catholic defaming a people of different faith.

Jamie makes the central point: that protesting the nature of a piece of art is not a parallel activity to protesting the freedom of an independant artist to create it or of a publically-funded institution to display it. Intentionally obscuring this line allowed conservative commentators to have a heyday claiming that the Ofili episode was yet another demonstration that liberals hate religion except when it’s aberrant and/or un-Christian. Keith risks echoing that line in the graph above – what exactly does it mean to say “now that the tables are turned”? Now that Jews rather than Christians are allegedly impugned? I trust that Keith doesn’t intend the nastier readings of that line – but it’s an unfortunate turn of phrase.

I do disagree with Jamie, however, on two points. The first, which is incidental, is that I agree with Jack Newfield’s account in this book that Giuliani’s stand against Ofili’s painting was much less about his bowing to pressure from the “Catholic leaders” Jamie references and much more about his ill-conceived gambit to pick up suburban votes for his senate run by sparking a controversy. Second, while I agree with Jamie that the Museum had the right to display “tasteless” art, I think to describe Ofili’s work as “tasteless” is an unfortunate mischaracterization of the piece – a mischaracterization which went largely unchallenged in the press at the time. Ofili was a Nigerian altar boy who set out to create a work to reconcile his African heritage and his Christian identity. The elephant dung was a traditional sign of respect which he incorporated into portraits of other figures as well. “The Holy Virgin Mary” was, in Ofili’s words, “a hip hop version.” I wrote more about this in the early days of this site in a post here (scroll all the way down), on a strangely fitting coda to the whole episode.

In related news, Drudge is reporting that Mel Gibson declined to appear in tonight’s Oscars because he was afraid he’d be booed. So much for redemption in suffering.

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In this week’s Yale Herald (it’s a sidebar they haven’t posted on-line), a leader of the Yale anti-GESO graduate student group, At What Cost, warns Yale’s administration that its heavy-handed anti-union tactics are prone to backfire in the long run:

The Yale administration is opposed to GESO, and no one is going to change that one way or another. My concern is that when the Administration enters in the fray. It lends credence to GESO’s claim.

As well it should. At What Cost, at the Academic Labor Board hearing last year, declined to support the administration’s stated plans to have the results of an NLRB vote impounded and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court either. So it appears Levin’s anti-union tactics find little sympathy even among anti-union grad students.

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I tend to make an effort, on this site, to highlight pieces by folks I generally, sometimes vehemently, disagree with which demonstrate our common ground. On the one hand, it bolsters my case to cite supporters to the right of the upper- or lower-case left. On the other hand, I think it’s important to distinguish differences in postulates, differences in conclusions, and everything in between – to know where the real area of contestation lies. And sometimes, just because it’s reassuring and humbling to remember what we don’t disagree about.

Having said all that, I’ve made clear in the past what I tend to think of David Brooks’ arguments. The same probably holds for the arguments he would see as natural correlaries – and I would see as perversions – of the account he sets forth in column today. But his account, nonetheless of a Bar Mitzvah in the shadow of the Shoah is deeply resonant. I was also, not so long ago, a Bar Mitzvah named Joshua, and I chanted the Shama holding a Torah rescued from an atrocity which so many – one of whom I’m named after – could not escape.

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James Carroll on The Passion:

Jews as presented in this movie are overwhelmingly negative. Roman soldiers brutally execute Jesus, but Pontius Pilate is a good man, who stands in dramatic contrast to Caiaphas, the Jewish High Priest. Going well beyond anything in the Gospels, Gibson’s film emphasizes Roman virtue and Jewish venality by inventions like these:

Pilate’s wife Claudia is an actual heroine, who aligns herself with Mary. Mary, terrified for her son, appeals to benign Romans against the hostile Jewish crowd.

Claudia is the woman behind the Romans. Her dramatic counterpart, the woman behind the Jews, is none other than a female Satan.

Pilate kindly offers Jesus a cup of water. Pilate orders Jesus flogged, but only to satisfy the Jewish bloodthirst.

The Jews are expressly indicted by the Good Thief, who, after the crucified Jesus says, “Father, forgive them . . . ,” tells Caiaphas that “He prays for you.” Jews are indicted by Jesus, who consoles Pilate by telling him, “It is he who has delivered me to you who has the greater sin.”

There is no resurrection in this film. A stone is rolled back, a zombie-Jesus is seen in profile for a second or two, and that’s it. But there is a reason for this. In Gibson’s theology, the resurrection has been rendered unnecessary by the infinite capacity of Jesus to withstand pain. Not the Risen Jesus, but the Survivor Jesus. Gibson’s violence fantasies, as ingenious as perverse, are, at bottom, a fantasy of infinite male toughness. The inflicting of suffering is the action of the film, and the dramatic question is: How much pain can Jesus take? The religious miracle of this Passion is that he can take it all. Jesus Christ Superstoic. His wondrous capacity to suffer is what converts bystander soldiers, and it is what saves the world.

In an act of perverse editing, Gibson has Jesus say, “I make all things new” as his torment approaches climax, as if cruel mayhem brings renewal. When Jesus cries out near the end, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” the film conveys not his despair, but his numb gratification. There’s the film’s inadvertent reversal, the crucifixion as a triumph of sadomasochistic exploitation. That triumph seems to be what Gibson’s Jesus salutes when he says finally, “It is accomplished.”

It is a lie. It is sick. Jews have every reason to be offended by “The Passion of The Christ.” Even more so, if possible, do Christians.

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(Not so) great moments in government transparency:

The panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States will get one hour to ask President Bush what he knew about events leading up to the suicide airline hijackings, the White House said on Friday. “They are looking at an hour as you pointed out,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said when asked by a reporter whether he could confirm reports that Bush was limiting the meeting to an hour.

Rather than sitting down with all 10 members of the so-called 9/11 commission, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have only agreed to meet privately with its chairman, Thomas Kean, and the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton. The panel would prefer that Bush meet with all of the members.

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Three days to Super Tuesday:

Going into the final weekend, state Democratic leaders and aides to Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry said that Mr. Edwards’s best hope for victories was in Ohio, Minnesota, Georgia and perhaps Maryland, based on public and private polls in recent days. Both campaigns were advertising, though not particularly heavily, in Georgia and Ohio, as well as New York, a state where Mr. Edwards hopes at least to win some delegates. But his campaign showed signs of distress as it struggled to cope with the huge playing field. Mr. Edwards changed his schedule at the last minute on Friday, scrapping a day of campaigning here after polls showed him facing a California drubbing by Mr. Kerry, and he headed for Minnesota in search of a state he could win on Tuesday. And Democratic leaders across the country, including many who continued to praise his political skills, said Mr. Edwards would have a tough time proceeding if he did not score victories on the biggest day of Democratic primary and caucus voting to date.

Meanwhile, the Times reports Kerry leading leading here in Connecticut – a lead which Tom Vannah in the New Haven Advocate argues is well deserved – with potential challenges from John Edwards and Howard Dean, who made a triumphant return to New Haven to speak here Thursday night for the first time since conceding, and several of whose supporters plan to vote for him here and in other states in order to send like-minded candidates to the convention. This is not the case however, even here in his home state, for Joe Lieberman.

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An outrageous offense to the values of the Jewish people:

What Deputy Defense Minister Ze’ev Boim claimed was a simple rhetorical questioning of links between Palestinian genetics and terrorism backfired into charges of racism and calls for his resignation Tuesday. Speaking at a Herzliya memorial ceremony on the 26th anniversary of the Coastal Road Massacre – when Fatah terrorists from Lebanon hijacked a bus and which ended in the deaths of 32 Israelis – Boim pondered the recent wave of Arab terrorism. “What is it with Islam in general and the Palestinians in particular? Is it some sort of cultural deficiency? Is it a genetic defect? There is something incomprehensible in their continuing murderousness,” Boim said.

Boim’s remarks sparked a plethora of reaction by Israeli lawmakers. Likud MK Yehiel Hazan attempted to answer Boim’s “rhetorical question.” “This is something in their blood. It is genetic. I never conducted any research on this, but there is no other explanation. You can’t trust an Arab even after 40 years in the grave,” Hazan told reporters.

Beduin MK Taleb a-Sanaa of the United Arab List called for Boim’s resignation. Ahmed Tibi (Hadash) said in a statement from The Hague that Jews should know better than others of the claims used against them as being inferior because of their genetic makeup

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Looks like the terrorists have multiplied:

The chairman of American International Group Inc., the world’s largest insurer by market value, on Tuesday called lawyers opposed to tort reform ‘terrorists’ and said class-action lawsuits are a ‘blight’ on the United States. In remarks to business executives in Boston, Greenberg likened the battle over reforming class-action litigation to the White House’s ‘war on terror.’ AIG insures corporations against multibillion-dollar claims of damages in asbestos lawsuits, for example. ‘It’s almost like fighting the war on terrorists,’ Greenberg told Boston College’s Chief Executives’ Club. ‘I call the plaintiff’s bar terrorists.’

…’I think it’s outrageous to try to use the specter of terrorism against the trial bar,’ ATLA President David Casey said. The group, which counts 60,000 lawyers, represents on a pro bono basis more than 1,700 families who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United State, Casey said.

Turns out not only wanting to be paid for teaching children, but also prosecuting aspestos makers for making people sick and standing up for victims of terrorism makes you a terrorist. I guess they really are everywhere.

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This story about the Bush administration forbidding editing of books from enemy countries could be funny if it weren’t so scary:

It has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy. Anyone who publishes material from a country under a trade embargo is forbidden to reorder paragraphs or sentences, correct syntax or grammar, or replace ‘inappropriate words,’ according to several advisory letters from the Treasury Department in recent months.

Adding illustrations is prohibited, too. To the baffled dismay of publishers, editors and translators who have been briefed about the policy, only publication of ‘camera-ready copies of manuscripts’ is allowed.

A peculiar, and outrageous, way to get a leg up in the battle for hearts and minds.

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If they can’t make it there…

…a new study examining trends in joblessness in the city since 2000 suggests that by 2003, nearly one of every two black men between 16 and 64 was not working. The study, by the Community Service Society, a nonprofit group that serves the poor, is based on data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and focuses on the so-called employment-population ratio – the fraction of the working-age population with a paid job – in addition to the more familiar unemployment rate, the percentage of the labor force actively looking for work.

Don’t hold your breath for Bloomberg to take the chance to come out for a bold job creation program – or for New York Democrats to pressure him to.

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Senate conservatives shoot down an extension of unemployment benefits:

The measure would have extended the emergency benefits program for six months, providing 13 weeks of extra unemployment benefits to people who exhaust their state benefits — usually after 26 weeks.

The unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 percent last month from a high of 6.4 percent last summer, but the economy still is not producing many new jobs. In fact, more than 2,400 U.S. employers reported laying off 50 or more workers in January, according to the Labor Department. It was the third-highest level since the government started tracking mass layoffs a decade ago.

Democrats are seizing on the troubled job market to boost their election prospects in November. Some Republicans think that they might be vulnerable. Those concerns led 39 Republicans to break rank last month to support a benefits extension in the House.

The Republican Party: Tanking the economy and cutting benefits for the victims.

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Penn faculty call on their peers to join the push for the University to count the votes:

The tendency among the Penn public to accept uncritically University representations of the issues at stake and facts of the case is alarming in an institution devoted to independent thinking and rigorous scholarship. We all have a responsibility to insist on full disclosure and reasoned, respectful debate. By obstructing the counting of unionization ballots, the University seeks to prevent unionization and thus to undermine the legal rights of people in the Penn community…As the Penn administration has endeavored to undermine workers’ rights, GET-UP has acted democratically and with collegial integrity. We support the graduate employees’ effort to get their votes counted.

I was glad, in particular, to see the names of distinguished Penn scholars and family friends Ian Lustick and Charles Bosc among the near-hundred faculty on the petition. Here’s hoping many more follow their lead.