Channeling Mel Gibson: Bill Donohue's War Against All Things Non-Catholic Is Heating Up ...Against Jews.

Maybe he was drunk at the time.

"Jews Had Better Not Make Enemies Of Their Catholic Friends Since They Have So Few Of Them"

One pope shedding tears at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem did nothing to eradicate anti-Semitism in staunch pro-Catholic circles: the latest exchange of emails between Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League and Philadelphia Rabbi Arthur Waskow indicate an animosity worthy of Mel Gibson.


Called "The Rottweiler's Rottweiler" (in reference to his defense of Benedict XVI and his own problems due to scandal and cover-ups), Donohue seems to goad people and groups into a fight. In fact, Donohue is such a staunch defender of the Catholic Church, he has turned offense into an art form: he has taken on progressive Catholic nuns ("totally lost their moorings"), the pay-away-the-lay controversy ("a severance package"), President Obama ( “He is now taking the culture war to the boiling point and he will pay.”) and gay marriage ("I want the law to discriminate against all alternative lifestyles, against gays and unions.").

Now he has taken on Jews as enemies of Catholicism.

It all started when Waskow, criticized the Vatican in a HuffPost op-ed piece for "attacking the religious freedom of millions of American women and the religious freedom of American nuns" on the matter of contraception. A rough email exchange ensued, with the indignant Donohue stating that "Jews had better not make enemies of their Catholic friends since they have so few of them." He then attributed the statement to former New York mayor Ed Koch. 

Koch has denied saying anything of the sort.

"Waskow is a man full of hate," he said, calling Waskow's op-ed "the kind of thing I'd expect from Bill Maher, not from a rabbi."

The exchange brought about a bit of irony as well: Donohue portrayed the recent Orthodox scandal of child abuse as an "epidemic" that Waskow (a Reformed rabbi) should take care of by "following the Catholic Church's reforms in dealing with clerical abuse." Rabbi Waskow obviously restrained himself from correcting Donohue on generalization of rabbis and - most notably - any comeback about cover-ups and pay-offs, the latter being a subject which Donohue has yet to fully address.

The odd connection to Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic sentiments comes in Donohue's defense of the Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ":

[wikipedia] Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I‘m not afraid to say it. That's why they hate this movie. It's about Jesus Christ, and it's about truth. It's about the Messiah.

NUNS ON THE BUS gets the Donohue treatment.

Waskow's defense of American nuns brought out the animosity Donohue has displayed for socially progressive nuns, such as the current Nuns On The Bus event touring the country. In an aptly titled Daily Kos article Catholic League to Progressive Catholics: don't let the door hit you on the way out, Armando succinctly points out that Donohue thinks that disagreeable Catholics should simply leave the church - and that includes nuns:

“Do we have more than a handful of nuns who have totally lost their moorings?” Donohue mused. “Oh, yeah.”

The problem is that the number of nuns has shrunk considerably in the last decade (now down to a mere 60,000 in the U.S.) and if the trend continues, there won't be anyone left to pay homage and subservience to the likes of Bill Donohue anyway.

With his uneducated and inappropriate statements, Donohue continually shoots himself in the foot, but he doesn't care, because he has always relied on the support of the Vatican: Sedevacantist* Mel Gibson mirrors Benedict more than even Benedict is willing to admit.

And God knows, the current pope has never been truly anti-Semitic.

Right.

The Passion of the Mel

Focusing On Gibson's Other Phobias

Before there was his misogynous rant
Before there was his racism
Before there was his anti-Semitism

There was the El Pais interview:

"They take it up the a** ... this is only for taking a s***,” he said at the time. "With this look, who's going to think I'm gay? I don't lend myself to that type of confusion. Do I look like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?"

Mel Gibson's outbursts have always attracted attention, but his most  recent rants have exploded exponentially: everything viral on the net was overshadowed by the news that filmdom's enfant terrible had eclipsed his last "lapse in judgment" -  drunken remarks blaming "The Jews" for everything. His (tacit) admission to domestic violence,  his use of the "N" word, his verbal abuse of the mother of his child  left most of his friends and colleagues with no reason to support him. People are asking each other, is this the end of his career?

However, my question is: how did we ever let it get this far? Yes, WE. The signs of an angry, bigoted and volatile personality were there long before his DUI in 2004. Looking back at all of the words and actions of animosity towards so many people, it's a wonder that his career both as an actor and as a director hadn't fizzled out twenty years ago. Put it this way: Mel Gibson was hired by the American public to entertain them. He did. But somewhere along the way, he opted to become an icon, a public personality as well as an actor. Maybe it was his stint at directing that made him realize that he could have power/control not only over a film, but over other people's lives. But in spite of his phobias, his errors, his crude and almost violent behavior, the American public still kept Mel Gibson on the pedestal/payroll - maybe because we can't stand seeing our icons walk away in disgrace.

 

Maybe it's time for America to fire Mel Gibson. It's not like he hasn't expected it. Again, before there were the misogynist and violent rants, there was the anti-Semitism. One of our own OpEdNews diarists has opined that perhaps the "Okasana tapes" are part of an elaborate  revenge/conspiracy of Hollywood's Jews as payback for his now infamous DUI rant. (I doubt it - my response). 

And before that...

There was the Anglophobia:

English critics saw through the machismo of Gibson's epic, Braveheart. In Colin MacArthur's book, Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots: Distortions of Scotland in Hollywood Cinema the author writes that 

"... a worrying aspect of the film is its appeal to "(neo-) fascist groups and the attendant psyche."

There was Sedevacantism. 

The word comes from the Latin, meaning "vacant seat', and although Gibson describes himself and his father as "traditional Catholics" his actions and views have leaned heavily towards this almost heretical view of the Catholic Church. Recently, Gibson had a full-scale church built on his land in Malibu, ensuring that the Catholic masses he attends will be said in Latin and that all of the old rites will be preserved. Sedavacantists disdain the "modernism" that took hold of Christianity after pope Pius X and rarely if, if ever, recognize any progress in the Church past Pius XII. Gibson's father, Hutton, is a writer and apologist of Sedavacantism.

There was "The Passion" 

 All the "miracles" surrounding Gibson's singular magnum opus, The Passion of the Christ, stood in contrast to Gibson's cavalier treatment of scriptures and scholarship regarding the Life of Christ and the the political climate of first century Roman Judea. Perhaps more than any other time, it was then Gibson enjoyed projecting his beliefs on the screen while cloaking them in sacred religion: his anti-Semitism and Sedavacantism became increasingly evident as time went on. He was on a mission to show Jesus the Christ as  Mel Gibson saw Him. The sources Gibson relied upon the most were also in question: two nuns, one, the stigmatic German nun Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824), another a Spanish nun named María de Ágreda (1602–1665). Although he had several scholars on the set, their scholarship was always laid aside in deference to these two. To Mel, mysticism trumped scholarship. 

Mel probably thought of himself as something of a mystic in his translation of The Passion to the screen, else why would he forego scholarship and jumble the scriptures?

There was his alcoholism and bi-polar disorder.

Being bi-polar (a late diagnosis and an even later admission) is one thing, but being bi-polar and alcoholic is a recipe for disaster. Gibson himself admitted that he started drinking at the age of thirteen and that while making his early films, he put away six pints of ale for breakfast. (!). He also admitted to thoughts of suicide. The peaks and valleys  of being bi-polar took their toll on everyone around Gibson. 

Defenders of Gibson have cited his bi-polar condition as a possible trigger to his rants. However, doctors familiar with bi-polar disorder have not been quick to chime in.  Some have gone so far as to suggest a form of psychotic break. And if his violent tone had been caused by his disorder, Oksana would have not have been quite as defensive.  

And then there was ... Hutton Gibson.

Hutton Gibson's views as a Holocaust denier are well known. And because Hutton has a forceful personality like his son, it would have been almost impossible for the son not to have had the same ideas.

wikipedia;

Gibson is an outspoken critic of the post-Second Vatican Council Catholic Church and a proponent of various conspiracy theories. In a 2003 interview he questioned how the Nazis could have disposed of six million bodies during the HolocaustSeptember 11, 2001 attacks were perpetrated by remote control.[1] He has also been quoted as saying the Second Vatican Council was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews".[2]

Perhaps one of the most troubling aspects of Mel Gibson is that there is also a humanitarian behind the manic, xenophobic facade: he and his former wife have been among the chief donors to Healing the Children, he has been instrumental in preserving Costa Rican rainforests and, along with pop icon, Sting, contributed to the fund for the cleaning and restoration of Michelangelo's David.

Gibson, however, has not become a lovable bigot, like some Archie Bunker in Hollywood. His social sins have been too grave.

***

A career that has spanned three decades, filling the public with power and respect has been badly stained by the personal ideologies and exploits of its star. And like it or not, as a celebrity who has willing revealed parts of his personal life, Mel Gibson has taken us through his journey and has exposed us to his some of his ugliest problems: a father who vehemently denies the Holocaust and adheres to the ideologies of Sedevacantism; a history of substance abuse; bi-polar disorder; homophobia; anti-Semitism; racism; misogyny. Click them off in the proper cadence and one might have Gibson's own Stations of the Cross. His "Passion" so to speak. But he has dragged us through these episodes, only sometimes asking for our forgiveness.

In the wake of the taped-rants scandal, Gibson's agent, The William Morris Agency has dropped him. But as his REAL employer, can the U.S. fire him? A kinder separation would be termed "retire."

But maybe that would be too kind.

Just a thought.

The Madman and The Little Flower: Glenn Beck Unwittingly Mimics The FATHER OF HATE RADIO!

"I AM NOT A KOOK!"

It's strange that Glen Beck doesn't know anything about the man he's mimicking. It's expected that almost any Christian you meet will not, when questioned, know anything about the history of his own religion, but when a man comes this close to aping a famous personage, you have to wonder whether he's telling the truth or whether he's too stupid to see the resemblance.

The first time I became aware of the comparison of Glen Beck to Father Charles Coughlin was yesterday. Yes, I'll admit that if I had heard Beck more often, the thought would have come sooner, but listening to strange and faulty reasoning makes my head ache. And seeing it on the TV screen accompanied by strange chalkboard charts (and sometimes even stranger guests) makes my stomach gurgle. The eerie comparison was brought about by an article in Crooks and Liars by David Neiwert.

...One of Glenn Beck's favorite claims about the Tea Party movement -- and the surge of right-wing populism that he's leading -- is that it isn't about parties, it's about being American. And being American, of course, means being conservative.

"...you know, we're really at a one-party system at this point. We needed to identify ourselves as one or the other, even though it didn't really make a difference. And that label was much more important than the real label we all should have been wearing, and that is, American.

Progressives have put their agenda now into hyperdrive, and it is so crystal clear that their final goal is anything but American.

Sometime in his broadcasting career, Glen Beck decided that the best way to get people to listen to him was to hammer at the prime concepts: "us vs them" "good vs evil" "traditional values vs progressive change" "blue collar vs white collar" and, of course, "American vs. foreigner" (i.e. illegal immigrant) Also along the way: he decided that there was no direct link between his polemics and the actions of his listeners. He washed his hands of all their transgressions. It's time to look at what Beck is getting himself into: the throes of "righteous assassination": Bill O'Reilly had a sense of it after the murder of Dr. Tiller:

Huffington Post:

"It's a variation of a Twinkie Defense," said legal expert Jonathan Turley. "They will attempt to connect Mr. Roeder's heavy intake of Bill O'Reilly combined with a talk-radio hate-speak rush to prove that Roeder did not have the capacity to make a rational decision when he shot Dr. Tiller. "The deluge of 'Tiller is a Nazi, mass murderer, baby killer' verbiage by Mr. O'Reilly surely can drive one into a state of what we in the legal profession call 'righteous assassination.'"

Those in the psychology community support the defense.

"Just the fact Mr. O'Reilly has an audience at all gives credence to the point that the so-called Folks™ who watch Bill O'Reilly have a decreasing ability to determine the difference between fact and fiction," said Dr. Hal Densky. "It's a brainwashing of sorts, though with O'Reilly it's more of a complete lobotomy."

The hatred fostered by Father Charles Coughlin of Royal Oak, MI in the 30's may have been incendiary to the point of righteous assassination. We may never know. Because a man with a clerical collar would never be linked to a Jew's death, or a Communist's murder no matter how influential and bigoted his broadcasts.

Ah, that was such an innocent, trusting time, wasn't it?

Father Charles Coughlin was a parish priest for the church The Shrine of the Little Flower, titled after St. Theresa of Liseux, a meek, mild, 19th century Carmelite nun.

I was only about ten when, traveling from Chicago to Quebec on vacation, my folks and I stopped at The Shrine of the Little Flower. The only memory I have of it, is that it was a large church that gave me a strange feeling: I'd never seen an altar placed in the middle of an enormous octagon. The church sat over 3,000 and, looking back, was really the country's first megachurch. And had its own radio evangelist, talking not about God, but about politics.

Wikipedia on Father Coughlin:

His office received up to 80,000 letters per week from listeners, and his listening audience was estimated to rise at times to as much as a third of the nation.

On November 20, 1938, two weeks after Kristallnacht, when Jews across Germany were attacked and killed, and Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues burned, Coughlin said "Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted."

And:

"There can be no doubt that the Russian Revolution ... was launched and fomented by distinctively Jewish influence."

Coughlin was an isolationist who admired Hitler in his nationalism and hatred of the Jews. His rhetoric prompted Joseph P. Kennedy - as early as 1933 - "to warn Roosevelt that he was an out and out demagogue." His isolationism made him sound a bit like Rush Limbaugh: "Less care for internationalism and more concern for national prosperity." It was even intimated in reports from the FBI that Coughlin received indirect funding from Nazi Germany during the mid 30s. Coughlin published a magazine titled "Social Justice" and started his own political party, the Union Party. What contributed to his downfall, however, was his direct association with a militant hate group called Christian Front:

From Goliath Business News:

In October 1943, the New York newspaper PM declared that bands of Irish Catholic youths, inspired by the Coughlinite Christian Front, had for over a year waged an "organized campaign of terrorism" against Jews in Boston's Dorchester district and in neighboring Roxbury and Mattapan. They had violently assaulted Jews in the streets and parks, often inflicting serious injuries with blackjacks and brass knuckles, and had desecrated synagogues and vandalized Jewish stores and homes.

wikipedia:

Kennedy worked with Roosevelt, Bishop Francis Spellman and Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) in a successful effort to get the Vatican to silence Coughlin in 1936.

His voice continued to be heard through his publication, Social Justice. It was finally on May 1, 1942...

...the Archbishop of Detroit, Most Rev. Edward Mooney, ordered Coughlin to stop his political activities and confine himself to his duties as a parish priest, warning that he would be defrocked if he refused. Coughlin complied and remained the pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower until retiring in 1966.

In the response Glen Beck gives to being compared to Coughlin, Beck challenges his listeners if they actually know who Coughlin was, states that he is different because Coughlin was a "kook" while he, Beck, is a reasoning person. And that even though he admits to be an off-the-wall entertainer, he's not crazy.

Many people would beg to differ on that point. Also, if Coughlin did indeed have the ear of a full one-third of the populace, don't you think it odd that Beck would not have ever heard of Father Charles Coughlin,"The Father of Hate Radio."

Beck has neither listened to nor read a truly nuanced account of his bloviating, his distortions, his lies and his attacks on just about everyone who's not Glen Beck. His vanity prohibits the possibility that he can be compared to a priest who should have learned to keep his mouth shut. His whole rant against the comparison to Coughlin can be (and should be) listened to because he doesn't see how he could possibly be compared to the Father of Hate Radio, Father Charles Coughlin.

It's interesting to not that even the "kookiest" of the "kooks" looks upon him as anything but a greedy misanthrope who has no idea of the ramifications of his rhetoric.

Just the other day, "Dr." James David Manning, (he of the "Long-legged-MacDaddy-Barak Hussein-Obama" diatribe) said that "housewives fall for Glen Beck the same way they do for Oprah Winfrey" and that Saturday's event in Westbury, NY - a dual book signing with Bill O'Reilly ("all that stinkin' group") - is an attempt to profit "from the ignorance of the American people." He goes on to say that because billionaire Al-Walid Bin Talal is now the largest single shareholder of Rupert Murdoch's corporate Fox News, both Beck and O'Reilly are now "on the Islamic payroll."

When someone who's considered the most outlandish clown of the Christian Right dishes him as an outlandish, but greedy, clown it's about time that Glen Beck should look at himself in the mirror and ask "Where am I going.?"

But he won't.

Starting the Year With A Bloody Muckraking Headache: Taking On The Christofascists

Or, How I Had A Good Time In Spite Of All The Bloodshed

OK, so I didn't have a good time. Not really. I spent New Year's Day revisiting some of my old material, my old gripes, my old passions, my old fears. And you know what?

They're still here.

They haven't changed. Oh, in the last three years the main characters have changed somewhat: they've gone from mostly Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to a variety of Christofascists: Mike Huckabee, Ann Coulter, Glen Beck (marginal, but nonetheless a presence hard to avoid), Rod Parsley, Rick Warren, Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, Benedict XVI, etc. But widening the field has only pumped up the volume: there are more people bloviating over social issues and politics than ever before and covering/reading about/expounding on them is very acidic to my brain as well as my stomach. And their venues for screeds and harangues have not really changed either: separation of church and state, same-sex marriage, abortion, politics, war, morality, etc., etc. I'm working on a particularly difficult piece right now, - Islamophobia - and as with other subjects, this one is going to create more muckraking (for me), more rhetorical bile (from Christofascists) and more written displeasure (from everyone). It takes on Anti-Semitism, death tolls,, persecution, and religious history (which my detractors will insist is revisionist). It will definitely get responses of "NO!" "Not True!" "Un-American!" "written by an idiot," "inconsequential bile."

...and their point? They want to make sure that everyone knows that they hate me. They read my articles, spurred on by an insulting or titillating title, then spend their time telling me as well as others how wrong I am. Oh, they've been getting more sophisticated: they use spell check ... sometimes. And they've referred to other articles (usually in the op-ed section of their local paper). But they still write in generalities. I'm waiting for the day someone writes something of substance using concrete evidence. Apparantly I'm worth the effort for general outrage but not for researched, substanciated outrage.

I looked back at one article in particular and want to share it. It was written within several weeks of Katrina and it featured, of course, Robertson and Falwell. Their responses to disasters and acts of terrorism are still mimicked by Christofascists today: God's wrath resulting in nature's destruction, economic crises, hard times.

God's Ambulance Chasers

By DAN VOJIR

I've just come from another "beer bust" for Katrina hurricane victims. Given the magnitude of the charity the U.S. has shown for them, this might become a usual pastime for more than several months. The difference with these beer busts is that they are sponsored by gay bars.

What this brings to mind is the point that true compassion knows no "orientation" boundaries, while the doctrines of many churches lead us to believe that food and shelter for the suffering are given a decidedly "Christian" slant. Some fundamentalists, such as Repent America's Michael Marcavage and Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church), are, in fact, enjoying their role as God's Ambulance Chasers: Marcavage offers "prayers" but no help, while Phelps' website has a headline "Thank God For Katrina!"

Other Christian pleas are more indirect in their conditional compassion: Falwell Ministries requests people to "send a special gift to support our volunteer-driven, faith-based response to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina" and touts the work of Southern Baptist Conference, the infamous fundamentalist denomination that reviles homosexuals, feminists and (still) Jews. Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing works in conjunction with FEMA while cloaked with an air of righteousness. It's a sort of poor man's Salvation Army and reminiscent of the lyric from Guys and Dolls: "Halleluiah, place a nickel on the drum, save another drunken bum! Place a nickel on the drum and he'll be saved!"

Even Barbara Bush had an air of sanctimoniousness about Katrina's devastation with her "underprivileged anyway" words of patrician moral wisdom. At another time and place, I believe the quote was actually "Let them eat cake!"

I guess it all comes down to the irony of ironies: legions of queers are much quicker to respond than FEMA or faith-based charities and far less toxic to the conscience.