'Passion' for a pogrom?

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Benyamin Cohen, editor of the online publication Jewsweek, went to see Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and came out homicidal: "My first comprehensible thought was this: I really want to kill a Jew."

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times agreed:

"In 'Braveheart' and 'The Patriot,' his other emotionally manipulative historical epics, you came out wanting to swing an ax into the skull of the nearest Englishman. Here, you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth. And since the Romans have melted into history ... ."

Really? Youwant to kick in some Jew teeth? I mean, really want to?

If you say so. It may be that elderly schoolgirl columnists at the New York Times are unusually easy to rouse to violence. But I reckon Miss Dowd and Mr. Cohen are faking it. They don't mean that, thanks to Mel, Times marquee columnists and liberal Jewish New Yorkers will be rampaging around looking for Jews to kill, they mean all those rubes and hicks in Dogpatch who don't know any better will do so.

True, it's an inspirational film. A woman who drove her Chevy Lumina into a brook in New Britain, Conn., last week told police she had been inspired to do so by "The Passion." What's that about? Aqua-Semitism? But, so far, even sodden sedans are a rarity. Chances of any Jew getting his teeth kicked in by one of Mel's customers? Zero percent. OK, let me cover myself a little: Point-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-whatever percent.

Throughout the whiplash U-turn, only one feature of the "controversy" remained constant: that the movie is "anti-Semitic." It's true that in Europe "passion plays" often provided a rationale for Jew hatred. But that was at a time when the church was also a projection of state power.

What is happening in America is quite the opposite: One reason Hollywood assumed Mel had laid a $30 million Easter egg was that the elite coastal enclaves who set the cultural agenda haven't a clue about the rest of the country when it comes to religion. They don't mind Jesus when he's hippy ("Godspell") or horny (Terrence McNally's "gay Jesus" play "Corpus Christi") but taking the guy seriously is just for fruitcakes.

So, when metropolitan columnists say Mel's movie makes you want to go Jew-bashing, they're really engaging in a bit of displaced Christian-bashing. Ever since September 11, 2001, there has been a lame trope beloved of the smart set: Yes, these Muslim fundamentalists may be pretty extreme, but let's not forget all our Christian fundamentalists -- the "home-grown Talibans," as the New York Times' Frank Rich called them, in the course of demanding that John Ashcroft, the attorney general, round them up. Two years on, if this thesis is going to hold up, these Christians really need to get off their fundamentalist butts and start killing more people.