Secular Sabotage

by William A. Donohue

  Of all the organizations that I dealt with during this ugly time, no group proved to be more reckless than People for the American Way. Just as they were to do the next year during the Brooklyn Museum of Art debacle, they never once condemned the bigotry, just those who protested it. The most vocal spokesperson proved to be Barbara Handman, vice president of the organization. Like so many others, she tried to blame the Catholic League for violence, even when it was made crystal clear to her that we had nothing to do with it. Worse, she not only defended the play’s contents, she even went so far as to say on TV that Serrano’s Piss Christ was “glorious.” What was so glorious about the crucifix submerged in urine was its message: Handman told me that it was a “reverential” statement about how “the current Catholic community was destroying the teachings of Christ.” 44 When I later asked Handman, who is Jewish, if she would be offended if someone put a Star of David in a bowl of feces, she expressed horror at the mere suggestion. Different strokes for different folks?

  We met again when Bill O’Reilly did two back-to-back segments on the controversy, just one day after the play opened. O’Reilly called me before the show to ask if I would confine my remarks to a description of the play; he would then take on Handman in the next segment. Though I wanted to debate her again, I agreed to his request. When I got to the green room, I met Handman and a friend of hers. Handman and I quickly clashed. After I did my interview with O’Reilly, Handman joined Bill, and I returned to the waiting room. Happy that things were going so well, I told Handman’s friend that the Catholic League “should use this as a fund-raiser.” At that she jumped to her feet, walked right up to me, and said, “It’s enough to make you hate Catholics!” She then literally stomped down the hall screaming. It was a magnificent sight.

  Not one to give up, I wrote to Handman the next day describing her friend’s antics, asking, “I would like to know whether you approve or disapprove of this statement?” I also said there were “three witnesses to this bigoted comment.” In closing, I cited O’Reilly’s comment to her at the end of their segment: “If somebody put on a play that said that the Holocaust was a farce or it was right to kill all of the people in Europe who got killed by the Nazis, wouldn’t you say…” After O’Reilly said this, she barked, “That’s a terrible play.” I ended my letter by saying, “How do you know that it would be a terrible play? After all, you said you couldn’t judge Corpus Christi because you hadn’t seen it, so why are you so judgmental? How do you know that it wouldn’t be an artistic masterpiece?” 45 She never replied.

  The bigotry against Catholics, as displayed in the play and in some of the comments about the Catholic League, was profound. There is no other segment of the population that can be trashed with impunity by the artistic community and still receive the plaudits of playgoers and the cultural elites. Yet they persist in the fantasy that they are the tolerant ones.

  In 2008, the play made a return trip to New York City, though this time it was shown at some no-name place in Greenwich Village. Because of the venue, it wasn’t worth commenting on. Until, that is, the New York Times twice embraced it within a one-week period.

  Jason Zinoman applauded the play for its “reverent spin on the Jesus story,” 46 making any sane person wonder just how debased a play about Jesus must be before critics like him brand it for what it is. Had the play substituted Martin Luther King for Jesus, it’s a sure bet Zinoman wouldn’t have labeled it “reverent.” Mark Blankenship took aim at those who protested the play in 1998, saying it offered “stark reminders of lingering homophobia.” 47 So when anti-Catholic homosexuals like McNally feature Jesus having oral sex with the boys, and Catholics object, it’s not McNally who is the bigot—it’s those protesting Catholics.

  When the newspaper’s public editor, Clark Hoyt, got pounded with angry e-mails from Catholic League members, he did a story on the controversy. He asked Paul Baumann, editor of the Catholic left-wing magazine Commonweal, what he thought of it all. Not surprisingly, he blamed me for overreacting, saying absolutely nothing negative about the play. 48 That’s because Catholic journalists like him are always interested in currying favor with secular journalists, and one way to do it is to throw their religion overboard while demonstrating how open-minded they are. What they crave more than anything else is recognition, and what they get in return is neither recognition nor respect. They’ve been had.

  Pure Nihilism

  What is most astonishing about all this is the insatiable appetite that secular saboteurs have for bashing Christians. For them, it is pure fun to see Penn and Teller rip away at Christians onstage. But sometimes the duo manage to offend even their fans. Many walked out of a performance in which Teller appeared nearly naked at the World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas in 2003. Dressed as Christ on a full-size cross, Teller allowed a midget dressed as an angel to perform simulated sex on him (Penn unveiled the scene by pulling away a “Shroud of Turin” that covered the cross). 49 Nor did everyone approve of Penn Jillette’s rant against Mother Teresa in 2005. At least one of those associated with the assault refused to work with Penn and Teller again. She called me saying it was too much to watch Jillette screaming about Mother Teresa in the most vulgar of terms; he also used the C word to refer to her order of nuns. 50

  Unlike Penn and Teller’s fans, Madonna’s never protest. Her musical Confessions tour was a huge success. Between political statements of the most inane kind and her oral sex jokes, she found time to don a crown of thorns, hang from a mirrored cross, and croon her ballad “Live to Tell.” The Material Girl, who believes “Catholicism is a really mean religion” (it’s the teachings on sex that makes it so really mean), 51 almost succeeded in getting NBC to air her entire theatrical production on Thanksgiving Eve of 2006. What stopped her was the Catholic League and Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center: we wanted NBC to pull the mock Crucifixion scene. Indeed, we threatened a boycott of one of the show’s sponsors if it was included (we pledged to announce which sponsor on the day after the show aired—keeping all of them wary—just in time for the Christmas season). Though Madge said she would not allow the concert to be shown if it was edited, she swallowed her pride and decided to pocket the loot in her losing cause. 52

  It would be one thing if this secular hate speech disguised as artistic liberty were confined to the margins of society. Unfortunately, it is often given a high profile, showing up in prestigious venues.

  New York’s Carnegie Hall decided to welcome Jerry Springer: The Opera in Concert, imported from England, in 2008. The musical trashed Jesus and Our Blessed Mother with abandon, to the thrill of the well-heeled crowd. One part of the show featured Jesus and Satan engaging in “conflict resolution” in Hell. Jesus was depicted as fat and effeminate, thus giving rise to the accusation that he is a homosexual. Jesus replies, “Actually, I am a bit gay.” Eve, angry at being cast out of the Garden of Eden, reaches under Jesus’ loincloth and fondles him. The Virgin Mary is described as “raped by an angel, raped by God,” and there is a scene where Jesus uses an obscenity to warn his critics not to mess with him. 53

  All of this occurs among such story lines as a man becoming sexually aroused by dressing up in a diaper and having his girlfriend treat him like an infant, and a mother, wearing an oversize crucifix, informing her stripper daughter that she wishes the girl had died at birth. The musical’s twisted moral is summed up in a speech given by the Jerry character at the end: “Energy is pure delight. Nothing is wrong and nothing is right. And everything that lives is holy.” 54

  “Nothing is wrong and nothing is right.” Thus does this theatrical production underscore the central point of this book: the secular sabotage of America is driven by nihilism as much as it is by hate. All of it is deliberate and all of it is intended to offend.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sabotaged by Hollywood

  Hollywood Hates Religion

  There is more than anecdotal evidence that the secular elites in the television industry have a big problem with religion. For
example, in December 2004, the Parents Television Council released a study of the major television networks that detailed 2,344 treatments of religion constituting 2,385 hours of prime-time television. After examining the findings, Brent Bozell, president of the organization, concluded that “anti-Catholic bigotry” was “rampant” on network shows. 1 Two years later the organization found that prime-time shows dealt with religion “half as much as the year before.” It is significant that when they did, “religion was cast in negative light more than one-third of the time.” 2 And in 2007, the Media Research Center issued a devastating report, “The Media Assault on American Values,” which found that “74 percent of Americans believe the nation’s moral values have declined over the past twenty years, and large majorities hold the media responsible for contributing to that decline.” 3

  The secular saboteurs who dominate Hollywood are not indifferent to religion—they hate it. And that’s why the moguls never tire of bashing Christianity. But let a Catholic group produce a movie, and it’s enough to call out the National Guard.

  When Spitfire Grill was released in 1996 by a Catholic organization, Caryn James of the New York Times got nervous: “No one seemed to notice that it was financed by a conservative Mississippi company affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church and founded, as its ‘mission statement’ puts it, to ‘present the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition.’” If that wasn’t scary enough, James said that “watching it [the film] with the Sacred Heart League [the parent company of the producing studio] in mind makes all the Biblical imagery seem slightly sinister.” More important, she noted the film’s “multidimensional roots—Catholic backers, Protestant characters and a Jewish director—don’t diminish the eerie sense that viewers are being proselytized without their knowledge.” 4

  Now if what James said is to be taken seriously, is it fair to ask what kind of proselytizing has been going on in Hollywood for the past five decades? Michael Medved, who knows Hollywood as well as anyone, once said on air, “As you know, I’m not a Catholic, but it doesn’t matter what your religious orientation, everybody’s got to be a little bit tired of all of the Catholic bashing out of Hollywood. In one movie after another, you’ve got lecherous priests or pregnant nuns or corrupt cardinals, and it’s never balanced by anything positive. It’s really become a form of religious bigotry, it seems to me, and I don’t think it’s fair.” 5

  Indeed, in his book Hollywood vs. America, Medved chronicles a history of anti-Catholic films emanating from Hollywood. 6 The Catholic League has done the same. A fine video on this subject, Hollywood vs. Catholicism, made by Chatham Hill Foundation’s Jodie Thompson, makes the same point. More recently, former CBS executive Bernie Goldberg, speaking of media executives in general, said that “the one group you can easily offend with no fear of repercussions… is American Catholics.” 7

  Does Hollywood hate religion? If not, why does it continue to make movies that bash it? In December 2004, I created quite a stir among secularists when I said that “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.” 8

  The context of my remarks is never mentioned by my critics. Here’s what happened. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, with whom I have often agreed, had just gone ballistic mocking The Passion of the Christ, speaking derisively about “the guy”—Jesus—who was mercilessly beaten in what he called this “diabolical, criminal, violent mess.” In the very same segment that set the rabbi off, I said, “You have got secular Jews. You have got embittered ex-Catholics, including a lot of ex-Catholic priests who hate the Catholic Church, wacko Protestants in the same group…” Later in the debate I said, “There are secularists from every ethnic and religious stock,” but when people talk about Hollywood, they are “talking mostly about secular Jews.” 9 In short, I did not single anyone out.

  Hollywood is of course dominated by secular Jews, and it is demonstrably true that the movies made about Catholics over the past several decades evince an animus. It is also true that when Hollywood was dominated by an earlier generation of Jews, films about the Catholic Church were uniformly respectful. In other words, there is nothing inherently problematic about Jews in Hollywood making movies about Catholicism. Those who are not Jewish and make movies about the Catholic Church today also evince a secular bias, disrespecting Catholicism. To put it differently, there is nothing about any demographic group that impels its members to reflexively treat religion fairly or unfairly.

  All this aside, it is understandable that some reasonably minded persons in the Jewish community might raise an eyebrow about my use of the verb “controlled.” After all, anti-Semites have longed advanced the invidious notion that there is some kind of cabal among secular Jews plotting to undermine Christianity. That’s nonsense. 10 Of course there is no conspiracy. But there is a secular mind-set—it permeates Hollywood—and it is no secret that secular Jews are disproportionately represented in Hollywood studios. Just as we know that Harlem is associated with African Americans and Chinatown is associated with Chinese, we know Hollywood is associated with Jews. To be specific, secular Jews. It was not for nothing that the New York Times, writing about the Mel Gibson film, said that the movie industry “tends to be liberal and secular in outlook, as well as disproportionately Jewish.” 11

  There is more than a little hypocrisy here. Why is it considered okay to cite the role that Catholics have played in pushing Hollywood to adopt decency codes, but it is not okay to mention the role that Jews have played in making movies? And as long as those who chronicle the Jewish success story in the United States note the Jewish role in Hollywood, why is it not okay for others to mention their more recent role in a critical fashion? Surely there is a difference between being descriptive and promoting bigotry. Even if it is true, and it is, that bigots will use descriptive statements of a controversial nature to further their own cause, the answer to this kind of ignorance is not denial. Oftentimes, the only way to judge whether a person is being provocative or bigoted is to measure his words against what he has said and done previously regarding said group. In this regard, I am grateful to all those Jewish friends of mine who quickly rushed to my defense during this controversy.

  The day after I debated Rabbi Boteach, he was kind enough to have me on his radio show to discuss the matter further. During the conversation, I admitted there was a segment of the Catholic community that is anti-Semitic. I then asked him if he would agree that there is a segment of the secular Jewish community that is anti-Catholic, and to my astonishment he said no. He denied it without equivocation. 12 That’s also nonsense.

  What really angered Rabbi Boteach was the fact that prominent Jews disagreed with his criticism of me. Here is what he said: “When my debate with Donohue exploded into the newspapers, I was invited on to the radio shows of fellow Jewish conservatives Dennis Prager and Michael Medved. Both are devout Jews and outstanding ethical lights, with Dennis in particular serving as one of America’s most gifted exponents of morality. Yet, I was astonished when both Prager and Medved defended and agreed with Donohue’s statement that it was secular Jews who oppose Christianity who were primarily responsible for the sleaze coming out of Hollywood.” He said this was “chicken feed” compared to what Rabbi Daniel Lapin, “another friend and colleague,” wrote about this issue. Lapin said, “You’d have to be a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia not to know of the role that people with Jewish names play in the coarsening of our culture. Almost every American knows this. It is just that most gentiles are too polite to mention it.” 13

  The Forward, a Jewish weekly, published an editorial in 2004 saying it was merely a “sociological observation” to note that “Jews run Hollywood.” The newspaper quite rightly said that to say “the Jews run Hollywood” is an entirely different matter, one that smacks of anti-Semitism. So it concluded that “No, ‘the Jews’ don’t run Hollywood. But Jews do, just as Koreans predominate in New York dry-cleaning and blacks rule basketball.” 14 Well said.

 
Jews are, quite understandably, wary of any language that has been used by their enemies to ignite the passions of bigots. So when Tom O’Neil, an astute Hollywood observer, innocently referred to “Jewish Hollywood,” talk-show host Keith Olbermann was quick to say, “And let’s clarify so nobody puts you on that list of folks who said things. When you said Jewish Hollywood, you meant the Jewish community in Hollywood.” To which O’Neil answered, “Oh, yes, exactly. Yes, absolutely.” 15 The distinction that Olbermann prodded is more cosmetic than substantive. No matter, the point was to rescue O’Neil from criticism.

  The same day of O’Neil’s admission, the Los Angeles Times said, “Hollywood was largely founded by, and the studios are still chiefly run by, Jewish executives.” A week later, Ruth Marcus wrote in the Washington Post that Hollywood “is in fact dominated by Jews.” 16 These comments are neither exceptional nor anti-Semitic, and attempts to brand them that way are pernicious. Moreover, the same sentiments were voiced at that time by many listeners to Mike Gallagher’s radio show, all of whom wondered, as did Mike, what all the fuss was about. Radio talk-show host Steve Malzberg was similarly kind to me, pointing out the context of my remarks and my past associations with the Jewish community.