Chuckie Watch 37: Chuckie's done gone to the movies

Yep, Chuckie says he made it to see The Passion of the Christ.  And guess what? Chuckie likes it!

Chuckie recounts various details of the movie. Toward the end, though, he picks up another point that he made in his previous installment, about how seeing movies about World War II didn't make him hate the Germans and the Japanese. So why should this movie give him negative feelings about "the Jews"? Here's Chuckie's latest version:

Insofar as the accusations of the film fostering anti-Semitism I would say that when I saw "Schindler's List," though it angered me with the Nazis, it doesn't make me hate the German people, anymore than seeing something that happened two thousand year's [sic] ago would make me hate the Jewish people.

If I hadn't read various other of Chuckie's rants where he mentions "the Jews", I'd probably be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt this time. But there's just a little too much of "nudge-nudge wink-wink you know what I really mean" about this.

Well, I'm mighty glad Chuckie found this gory torture movie inspiring. But since I've assigned myself the less sanguinary torture of commenting on Chuckie's rants, let me point out that Schindler's List was a movie about a good German, who took considerable personal risks to save a number of Jews from being murdered.

The Passion, on the other hand, relies heavily on some of the anti-Jewish stereotypes that were, as a matter of historical fact, used by Christians to promote hatred of Jews in the past. Now, I don't expect ole Chuckie to be worrying none about theological fine points. But if he's going to defend the film on that point, he could have engaged the actual concerns.

But he does venture into the field of Biblical scholarship a bit to say that The Passion "follows the Scriptures" and is "probably the most Scriptually [sic] correct film I've ever seen." Chuckie, as he often reminds us, isn't anti-Semitic because he's "pro Israeli." But as far as the issues that concern his fellow Christians about this film, he comes down solidly on the side that wants to put the most anti-Jewish spin on the Gospel Passion stories.