Is it safe to say that anyone who buys a ticket to “The Passion of the Christ” is paying Mel
Gibson blood money? Whether the term is defined as 1) “compensation paid to the family of a
murdered person,” or as 2) “reward for information about a murder,” or as 3) money “paid to a
hired murderer,” I’d say it applies in all three degrees. But that’s only a secondhand guess. To
know firsthand, I would have to pay to see the flick. That I won’t do.
Whatever genre “Passion” is — whether it’s a slasher film, a horror movie, or a spinoff of a Homer Simpson
fantasy, or maybe a snuff trip more accurately titled “The Jesus
Chainsaw Massacre” — I leave to the critics who’ve seen it to define, including whether
it’s purposely anti-Semitic. Something I do know, without seeing Gibson’s flick, is that it’s one
more signal of a perverse cultural moment. Add it to our Maximum (“I’m a War
President”) Leader’s call for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay
marriage and Der (“No Two Ways About It”) Gropenfuhrer’s order to halt gay marriages in San Francisco, and
we’ve got a three-fer.
