It’s time, yet again, to ask Dr. Difference
It’s been a while since we turned this column over to Dr. Sam Difference, the internationally recognized expert on teasing out fine distinctions between seemingly identical phenomena. After an extended field study in North and South Dakota, Dr. Difference is now back east examining rumors that every kosher pizza parlor in the New York metropolitan area is owned by the same guy. Dr. Difference took our questions over several slices at Pizza Crave — or perhaps Pizza Cave.
NJJN: Doc, what’s the difference between Mel Gibson and Shakespeare?
Dr. Difference: Ah, I think I know why you’re asking. You read that article in the Chicago Tribune asking why the latest film version of The Merchant of Venice has drawn respectful reviews, while Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was widely denounced as anti-Semitic. The writer suggested that it is easier to criticize Gibson than Shakespeare, because Gibson is a Hollywood actor, not the Bard, and that he is a “self-advertised conservative Catholic.”
I think the writer misses a big difference, in context and intent. Merchant was written when anti-Semitism was a given, and the evil Jew was a stock character on the stage. If Shakespeare were an average dramatist, he would have left it at that. But he was a genius, and he subverted his audience’s expectations: Shylock is villainous but human; we see how the Christians’ hatred wounds him, which in turns indicts the Christian characters for their “un-Christian” behavior.
Gibson, by contrast, comes along at a time when anti-Semitism is on the wane in Christian teachings, and reinjects it into the middle of his Passion narrative. He doesn’t attempt to humanize or understand Jesus’ Jewish antagonists (any empathy that he might display is extended toward Pontius Pilate, the Roman). His Jews are cruel and one-dimensional.
In short, Shakespeare takes a stock villain and attempts to humanize him; Gibson takes human beings and turns them back into stock villains.
NJJN: Speaking of anti-Semitism, is it hard to tell if a comment is anti-Israel or anti-Semitic?
Dr. Difference: Not if it’s coming from Michael Scheuer. Scheuer, aka Anonymous, the author of Imperial Hubris, headed the CIA unit charged with hunting down Osama bin Laden. Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this month, he declared that U.S. support for Israel is “probably the most successful covert action program in the history of man to control” a government’s foreign policy. And he said that the United States “can no longer afford to be seen as the dog that’s led by the tail,” or Israel, in other words.
Scheuer has said and written things like this before, and it’s fair game to urge the United States to be even-handed in brokering a Mideast peace. But it’s the use of the words “covert” and “clandestine” that links Scheuer to a tradition of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. The usual attack on the pro-Israel lobby, let’s remember, is that they use raw, transparent political power — PAC money and lobbying savvy, for starters — to influence the public debate. But according to Scheuer, all that public lobbying is just a cover for — well, some kind of secret activity that only a former spy like him could understand.
What might some of those clandestine activities be? Buxom Mossad agents blackmailing senators with incriminating photographs? Mind-control chips planted in the brains of Christian Zionists?
Asked by a writer from Commentary to elaborate, Scheuer says, “Well, the clandestine aspect is that, clearly, the ability to influence the Congress — that’s a clandestine activity, a covert activity. You know to some extent, the idea that the Holocaust Museum here in our country is another great ability to somehow make people feel guilty about being the people who did the most to try to end the Holocaust.”
So there you have it: Scheuer couldn’t find bin Laden, but he did discover a “clandestine” museum that covers a city block near the National Mall.
NJJN: What’s next for Scheuer — a full professorship at Columbia University? Kidding. But reports of anti-Israel activity at Columbia and the brouhaha over Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado show there’s something terribly wrong in academia, yes?
Dr. Difference: Maybe, but I’m paid — poorly — to make distinctions. Some students at Columbia are complaining that some pro-Palestinian professors are hostile to alternative views on the Middle East. But some of these same students are insisting that the issue is academic inquiry and respect for alternative viewpoints, not anti-Semitism. As one of the founders of Columbians for Academic Freedom put it in the Forward, “We are not concerned about what a professor says, but how he or she says it.”
Churchill’s case is different. Hamilton College in upstate New York canceled a speech by the then-chairman of the Colorado ethnic studies department after it was disclosed that he had called some Sept. 11 victims “little Eichmanns,” and thus “legitimate targets.”
The Columbia allegations are about professors bullying students for the views they hold. But the Churchill case is really about stupidity and callousness, not coercion or intimidation. If a student gets an “F” or a tongue-lashing because he’s a Zionist, then he deserves some sort of protection from the university. But do students really have a right not to hear from teachers who say stupid things?
Churchill’s university is investigating whether his body of work goes beyond disagreeable opinions to include willful disregard of the truth. That’s a firing offense in academia, and it should be. But even a devotee of distinctions like me knows there’s a fine line between one person’s fact and another’s opinion. Those who would defend our college kids should focus on instilling a climate of respect for a range of opinions, rather than trying to prevent certain opinions from being spoken.
NJJN: Last question. Is there a difference between About Jim and The King of Queens that I’m not seeing?
Dr. Difference: I have no idea what you are talking about.