1 Year From Now

If you look forward to the 2005 Oscar season, what do you see? I see a bunch of fanatics bitching and moaning as to why Mel Gibson film did not either get nominated or win an Oscar for every category. I think they will be really pissed if they don't get the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

Also, as soon as the Passion comes out on DVD I will be looking for news reports of some fool pissed off because public schools will not let him show the movie in the school. I expect that locally too.

Marriage Amendment Dead

Calpundit is pointing to a tally that indicates that 40 senators are against the anti-gay marriage amendment. Bush got his day in the theocratic sun, but nothing to show for it. Will this piss off the right wing? Will he still lose the centrist votes that one would guess such a swing right would eliminate?

Preaching to the Choir

Based on this article, the Gibson Movie seemed to just bring out the religious people, this really did nothing but reshuffle the deck. A few Catholics or Protestants might swap sects, but no one new is really taking up the mantle of Christianity. Now, I am sure evangelicals will tout some stats about who is joining their flock, but what I think they miss is that most people they gain, someone else's church is losing.

Gift Horse?

When it is Peter Bronson who writes a column about you and your book, do you take the media attention and smile, or do you distance yourself from his conservative stench? Well, if you are Kathy Y. Wilson, what do you do? Since Kathy writes for a paper with much smaller circulation I would just take it, and hopefully smile at the increase in book sales.

Pot - Kettle

Howard Stern Show Taken Off Clear Channel Stations

'Liberal Media'

Wow! This person is a copy editor. Amazing how the religious hate speech can just roll of the keyboard like that. I wonder if Peter Bronson is taking notes.

[Via Atrios]

Gibson's Film: Crucifixation

"Crucifixation" was from the Daily Show, which tonight hit the film's marketing machine hard. I do not think I will go see Mel Gibson's Passion. I don't like going to movies that get this kind of Hype. I have never seen Titanic, nor the Matrix movies.

What I have read about the film though, I really am taken aback by. I, as most readers should know, am an atheistic agnostic, so I don't share the religious beliefs of Mel Gibson or other various types of Christians. I was raised as a middle of the road Christian, Methodist to be specific, so I very familiar with the religious doctrine. I am repulsed by the violence and the worship of the violence the Jesus character is put through in the movie. To me the value of Christianity was to act like Jesus, the old golden rule element of the religion. Believing Jesus was the "son of God" seems so trivial. The point of the religion always seemed to be about how you treated other people, not about stroking the ego of a deity. This film to me glorifies that image, not of the caring person. It seems more about worshiping "Jesus" because he did this for you, instead of worshiping Jesus through your actions by helping people. This is an underlying difference in Christian sects, so I am sure many Christians would disagree, but hopefully they can see the differences.

Enquirer's review of the Film, and the Post's local PR piece on it.