Prince George: "Anybody could fight the duel and Wellers would never know!"

Edmund Blackadder: "All the same sir, Baldrick's plan does seem to hinge on finding someone willing to commit suicide on your behalf."

Prince: "Oh yes yes yes, but he would be fabulously rewarded--money, titles, castles--"

Edmund: "A coffin..."

We are going to miss him, not just because we loved the sound of his voice, but because he represents a brand of professionalism that has become a rare commodity among today's America-watchers. Nick Clarke's highly readable biography of Cooke notes how, across the decades, Cooke instinctively dug beneath the conventional wisdom. Whether covering the Alger Hiss trials, the civil rights movement, or the anti-Vietnam war marches, he was always wary of the liberal clichés that would have appealed to the Guardian's readers. He understood that, somewhere deep in the recesses of a story, it was possible to unearth a grain of truth. Cooke aimed to find it, regardless of how many people, liberal or conservative, he upset in the process.

Here's how the disgruntled National Security Council veteran put it last week in an exchange with Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission and former Washington Senator:

Mr. Gorton: "Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25 of 2001 . . . including aid to the Northern Alliance which had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted, say, on January 26, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?"

Mr. Clarke: "No."

Mr. Gorton: "It just would have allowed our response after 9/11 to be perhaps a little bit faster?"

Mr. Clarke: "Well, the response would have begun before 9/11."

Mr. Gorton: "But -- yes, but we weren't going to -- there was no recommendation on your part or anyone else's part that we declare war and attempt to invade Afghanistan prior to 9/11?"

Mr. Clarke: "That's right."

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has applied to the Archdiocese of Washington for an annulment of his marriage to Julia Thorne, the mother of his two grown children. Kerry and Thorne divorced in 1988; Kerry married Teresa Heinz, the widow of Sen. John Heinz, in her Nantucket home in 1995.

Thorne, who lives in Wyoming, has written a letter to the archdiocese opposing Kerry's petition. She could not be reached for comment yesterday. She wrote that she supports her former husband but is disturbed by the Catholic Church's process because she feels it demeans their relationship and their children. And she has written a blurb featured on the book jacket of "Shattered Faith," in which Joe's ex Sheila Rauch Kennedy blasts the church's annulment policy as unfair.

Asked to comment on why Kerry wants to annul his first marriage, and for his response to his ex-wife's opposition, the senator's office released this statement: "Sen. Kerry very much understands Julia's feelings and appreciates her support. Sen. Kerry believes that this is a private family matter."
-- Ann Gerhart and Annie Groer, "The Reliable Source," Washington Post, 10 April 1997

U.S. Sen. John Kerry broke his silence about his effort to annul his first marriage, joking on national radio today that the process can be confusing to non-Catholics.

He also poked fun at another Massachusetts Roman Catholic politician's very public annulment. U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy II's ex-wife wrote a book opposing the annulment and has asked the Vatican for a reversal.

"Seventy-five percent of all the annulments in the world take place in the United States, and I guess the figure drops to 50 percent if you take out all Massachusetts politicians," Kerry said after being dragged into a discussion by radio talk show host Don Imus.

Previously, Kerry had only issued a one-paragraph statement calling the decision "a private family matter."

"It's one of those special Catholic things. It's like confession or feeling guilty about things you haven't even thought of doing," said Kerry, a 53-year-old Democrat.
--Glen Johnson, Associated Press, 8 May 1997

He [Kerry] is enough of a stickler for Catholic rules to have sought an annulment of his 18-year first marriage before marrying again.

In a speech at a Mississippi church on March 7, [Senator Kerry] said Bush does not practice the "compassionate conservatism" he preaches, and quoted James 2: 14, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" ...

[Meanwhile, back on the Kerry campaign plane] "We have a separation of church and state in this country. As John Kennedy said very clearly, I will be a President who happens to be Catholic, not a Catholic President." ...

But just last week he made a rare appearance on the Senate floor to vote against a bill that would make harming a fetus a separate offense during the commission of a crime. The vote put Kerry on the same side as abortion-rights advocates in opposing specific legal rights for the unborn—and against nearly two-thirds of his fellow Senators.
--Time, 28 March 2004

"I have been told not to have anything about Voice of the Faithful in the Catholic Voice,'' Clark said. "Bishop Vigneron is our publisher, and we honor the wishes of our publisher.''

Under the newspaper's former publisher, the now-retired Bishop John Cummins, the Voice exhibited a fairly independent spirit. Vigneron is considered to be a more conservative prelate than Cummins. ...

Clark said she did not know whether the new bishop's intervention was the beginning of a more controlled and conservative administration for the East Bay church.

But Clark said she had been told by the chancellor of the Oakland diocese that Vigneron's crackdown came at the request of Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco.

Standing near the altar, Spina said he had considered cleaning the statue.

"But then I said to myself, maybe I should let it sit there a little while, to show that there are other people with views distinctly different from ours."

Political correctness has caught up with sign language for deaf people. Gestures used to depict ethnic and religious minorities and homosexuals are being dropped because they are now deemed offensive.

The abandoned signs include "Jewish", in which a hand mimes a hooked nose; the sign for "gay", a flick of a limp wrist; and "Chinese", in which the index fingertips pull the eyes into a slant. Another dropped sign is that for "Indian", which is a finger pointing to an imaginary spot in the middle of a forehead.

The signs have been declared off-limits by the makers of Vee-TV, Channel 4's programme for deaf people, for fear of being accused of racism and homophobia. Caroline O'Neill, a senior researcher at Vee-TV, explained: "We have a sign language monitor on the channel who checks that what we are doing is culturally appropriate."

Other signs that have been accused of being politically incorrect - such as the sign for German, which is a fist held to the forehead with a finger pointing straight up, mimicking the shape of a Prussian spiked helmet - are widely used.

In a scented room, Fred Gorski appraised his client, who was wrapped in a red satin robe and seated in a swivel chair in front of mirrors. His advice: stay away from dark colors. That meant blond or white hair for wigs, grays and blues for eye shadow.

"You're a winter palate," Mr. Gorski said.

Outside, the sign in front of Mr. Gorski's Victorian house on Staten Island read: Fairplay Male Image Consultants. Inside, on a recent night, Mr. Gorski was transforming two men into Samantha and Melissa.

Those who are impressed with French airs of sophistication and condescension toward the United States should check out the hard facts about French foreign policy over the past century -- which has been one short-sighted disaster after another. They have been consistently too clever by half -- at Versailles in 1919, at Munich in 1938, and in Algiers and Vietnam in the 1950s.

The only other nation with a comparable track record of self-inflicted catastrophes over the same span of time has been Germany. ...

What an irony that these two countries, with a track record of monumental foreign policy disasters, would be the ones to preen themselves on their superior wisdom in international affairs while impeding the American response to the terrorists' war. And what a pathetic thing that there are some Americans willing to accept French and German presumptions and condescension.

"Congregation B'Nai Israel Rabbi Robert Silvers, who spoke on a panel [on "The Passion"--what else? --Ed.] said it's unfortunate that a celebrity can use money to spread his own message."

National Right To Life Joins Pro-Abortion Groups To Kill South Dakota Bill Criminalizing Abortions; Thomas More Law Center Accuses Them Of Betraying Unborn

ANN ARBOR, MI -Shock waves are still reverberating one week after South
Dakota's bill criminalizing abortion was defeated by a single vote over
National Right To Life's complicity with pro-abortion groups to kill the
legislation that pro-abortion lobbyists called the most restrictive
anti-abortion measure since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

The Bill was sponsored by Republican State Representative Matt McCaulley who
had asked the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm
based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to help draft a bill that would directly
confront the holding of the Roe decision. As a result, House Bill 1191
banned virtually all abortions in that state and made it a felony punishable
for up to 15-years.

Immediately after the Bill was announced, National Right To Life
spokespersons and officers of their state affiliate opposed passage of the
Bill as not being the right time.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center accused
National Right to Life of betrayal, "It is one thing for National Right to
Life to disagree with the timing of a bill banning abortions, it is another
thing for them to join forces with pro-abortionists to kill the ban - it is
betrayal of the unborn and pro-life movement. When is it the wrong time to
do what is right? This organization has lost the moral authority to lead
the pro- life cause."

The bill passed the state House by an overwhelming majority, 54 to 14.
State Senator Jay Duenwald, an officer in both the state and National Right
To Life organizations, led behind the scenes opposition when the bill
reached the State Affairs Committee. Together with pro-abortion Senators,
Duenwald's lobbying efforts succeeded in removing the ban and replacing it
with an informed consent measure, something already covered by South Dakota
law. However, the ban was reinserted on the Senate floor through a
compromise measure that created an exception for the life of the mother and
if there was a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a
major bodily function of the pregnant woman.

Still the doctor was commanded to use reasonable medical efforts to preserve
both the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child.

South Dakota Representative McCaulley, observed, "There is something
horribly wrong when South Dakota Right to Life and Planned Parenthood are on
the same side of an issue."

Leslee Unruh, a member of Right to Life for 25 years, and Director of the
South Dakota Alpha Health Center, an abortion counseling service, whose
husband help start local Right to Life chapters throughout the state,
expressed shock as well. "We were shocked, saddened and dismayed that
National Right to Life lobbied against this bill. In effect, they aborted
the right to life bill."

After 31 years and over 40 million babies killed, the case of Roe v. Wade
making abortion a constitutional right is still the law. Yet, it took
homosexual activists only 17 years to overturn the Supreme Court decision
that allowed states to criminalize homosexual sodomy. Still, according to
National Right To Life - the time is not right.

National Right To Life's criticism of the timing of the bill is similar to
the attack on Martin Luther King's actions in Alabama. His famous Letter
from Birmingham jail answered his fellow clergy:

"Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was 'well
timed' in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of
segregation. For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the
ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has always meant
"Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that,
"justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Concluded Thompson, "One thing we know for sure, Planned Parenthood and
NARAL could not be happier with National Right To Life."

Major pro-life groups, including the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and South Dakota Right to Life (SDRTL), withheld their endorsement of the bill, thereby splitting the pro-life vote.

Why? The certainty of expensive—and, some argued, unwinnable—litigation. NRLC said the bid for a sweeping abortion ban was premature. SDRTL predicted the measure would not survive legal challenges.

The Pope said even the medical terminology used to describe people in so-called "persistent vegetative states" was degrading to them.

No matter how sick a person was, "he is and will always be a man, never becoming a vegetable or animal," he said.

The first charge came Feb. 4 when Andrew Zalay of California held a news conference in Albany to charge that his brother, Thomas, before committing suicide in 1978, wrote a note about having an affair with a bishop named Howard. The note was typewritten and unsigned, as well as undated. Hubbard hurried home from Florida to deny the Zalay allegation.

Two days later, 40-year-old Anthony Bonneau held a news conference and charged that the bishop had paid him for sex nearly 30 years ago when Bonneau was a homeless teenager living in an Albany park adjoining the chancery.

The following week, Fr. John Minkler, chaplain at the Veterans Hospital in Albany, turned up dead at home after being identified publicly as the author of a 1995 letter to New York Cardinal John O’Connor implicating Hubbard in sexual relationships with two other priests. Before his death, which is presumed to be a suicide, Minkler denied in a letter, in a conversation with a TV reporter, and to Hubbard that he was the author of the letter. According to John Aretakis, the lawyer who leaked the letter to the press, the letter was signed “Henry,” which [attorney John] Aretakis said was Minkler’s code name. Others who have seen the letter say the signature is indecipherable.

Aretakis, the common thread behind these accusations, has been well known to diocesan officials for nearly a decade. He brokered the 1996 payment of nearly $1 million to a victim of Albany priest Mark Haight, whom Hubbard had allowed to continue in ministry despite a previous instance of abuse.

Now close examination has revealed that, as a pint settles, bubbles touching the walls of the glass experience drag, similar to that a person feels sliding their finger along glass, and that prevents them floating up.

The bubbles in the middle however, are free to rise, creating a circular flow within the glass that causes bubbles at the edge to be pushed downwards on the inside surface of the glass.

The Edinburgh team, working with researchers at Stanford University in California have produced high-speed video footage of the sinking bubbles -- to put at rest the minds of any drinkers who might have felt they were seeing things.

"You can't deny when a movie makes that kind of money that the audience has spoken to the filmmaking community, but it's a frightening comment," said Michael Nozik, a producer of the forthcoming "Motorcycle Diaries," about Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary leader. Mr. Nozik is alarmed by the violence in "The Passion," he said, and dismayed by the "pot of anger" that has been stirred by accusations of anti-Semitism.

Dear Mr. Gibson,

It looks like you're going to make a profit on The Passion of the Christ. Please don't donate any part of the profits to charity. Instead, use it to finance other films, so this faithful audience can have the visualized stories they hunger for. Keep the standards high, and the audience will only grow. This will do far more for Christianity -- and religious faith in general -- than any other donation you might make.

Remember the parable of the talents, and keep putting this money at risk in service of your faith. Remember that these profits were given to you by fellow believers, because we trusted you as an artist and as a Christian to bring the scripture to life in a way that no sermon -- and no lesser artists -- ever could.

And when award season rolls around next year, please withdraw The Passion of the Christ from consideration for any and all awards.

It would demean this great film to be listed as a competitor for a prize. We don't need to hear absurd and offensive statements like "The Passion of the Christ really has legs as a contender for the Golden Globe" or "The Passion of the Christ is a shoo-in for the best-makeup Oscar."

Hollywood shut you out on this one. Keep this film outside. Don't let them use it as a tool to show how open-minded they are, after the fact. Since this is one of the few perfect films ever made, and since it deals with a subject matter sacred to you and to most of its audience, there will never be four other films worthy of being listed with it in any category.

The leader of Spain's victorious Socialists said Monday he will withdraw his nation's support for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, restating a campaign promise a day after his party won elections overshadowed by terrorist bombings.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, calling the war that ousted Saddam Hussein an "error," said he would recall Spanish troops from Iraq by June 30 unless the United Nations assumes control of multinational military operations there.

"People have not begun to sling mud," said Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "So far it's amateur hour - no illegitimate children yet."

Mr. Mead was referring to the mother of all negative campaigns, the 1884 race between Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine, a Republican senator from Maine. The race is perhaps best known for the attack line "Ma! Ma! Where's my Pa?" which Republicans chanted at Cleveland, who while mayor of Buffalo had an illicit relationship with a widow who bore him a child. Democrats had a response: "Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Historians say Cleveland probably would have lost had it come out closer to Election Day. As it was, Democrats had time to fight back. They painted Blaine as a corrupt businessman who ended a letter with the instructions, "burn this." But it became public, and Democrats broke into song:

"Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine!

The con-ti-nen-tal liar from the state of Maine."

As one of the Islamic fanatics who inspired al-Qa'eda said: "We are not trying to negotiate with you. We are trying to destroy you." The Islamic terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center, those who bombed Bali, and whoever it is in Spain who has now demonstrated a comparable appetite for indiscriminate killing, do not have specific political goals, in the way that terrorists such as the IRA or Eta have.

They wish to destroy the whole basis of Western society - secular democracy, individual liberty, equality before the law, toleration, and pluralism - and replace it with a theocracy based on a perverted and dogmatic interpretation of the Koran.

That is why the suggestion that we should try to negotiate with such terrorists is so fatuous: there is nothing whatever to negotiate about. It has been suggested that, had Spain not backed America's invasion of Iraq, then the bombs in Madrid would not have happened. It has also been claimed that our Government could save Britain from further depredations by withdrawing troops from Iraq and condemning America's presence in that country.

But al-Qa'eda did not kill nearly 3,000 people in New York in order to persuade President Bush to change American foreign policy, and the idea that we could prevent the next al-Qa'eda outrage by any change in policy at all is just silly.

Yesterday The Guardian published a leading article providing an object lesson in how not to tackle this global threat. "We need to get beyond them and us, the good guys and the bad guys," opined the newspaper - which also called for "an international conference to bridge the divide between Muslim and Christian communities".

The idea that we should try to appease the terrorists is wrong in every respect. It would not protect us, for nothing acts as a greater incentive to terrorists than the realisation that their target is weak and frightened. And it would only weaken the institutions we are trying to protect, and demonstrate to the terrorists that we are - as they frequently allege - too decadent and craven to defend the way of life to which we claim to be attached.

Christian Habsburg said: "We don't want to be treated like second-class citizens any longer. The Habsburgs were dispossessed by the Nazis and we should therefore be handed back our assets by the state just like all the other victims of National Socialism."

He added: "We are not talking about public money or about public buildings that went into the possession of the Austrian state. But we are talking about property that my family had privately owned and that were seized by the Nazis in 1938. We were then dispossessed after the war without compensation."

The bishop of Brooklyn says Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" bears a "powerful spiritual message" and provides images that will forever shape how he contemplates the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus.

The bishop, Nicholas DiMarzio, also dismisses the idea that the movie is anti-Semitic, as many critics have charged, saying that only those who are looking for anti-Jewish sentiment will judge it that way.

At several points in the play Cardinal Law's self-righteousness and his attempts to portray himself as a victim infuriate audience members. Mr. Sherman, the actor who plays him, said this makes the role "very tough." The outrage sometimes spills over into condemnations of Mr. Sherman himself. After one performance last week a woman in the audience yelled an expletive at him. ...

Laura Breault, a protester against the Boston archdiocese who flew here to see the play on Sunday, said she would work to bring it to a theater in Boston. She warned Mr. Sherman, "You're going to need bodyguards at the stage door."

Of course, I ought to have known that it's silly to try to buy a book when you go to a book shop. It merely startles and bewilders the inmates. The motheaten old bird who had stepped forward to attend to me ran true to form.

"A book, sir?" he said, with ill-concealed astonishment.

"Spinoza," I replied, specifying.

This had him rocking back on his heels.

"Did you say Spinoza, sir?"

"Spinoza was what I said."

He seemed to be feeling that if we talked this thing out long enough as man to man, we might eventually hit upon a formula.

"You do not mean 'The Spinning Wheel'?"

"No."

"It would not be 'The Poisoned Pin'?"

"It would not."

"Or 'With Gun and Camera in Little Known Borneo'?" he queried, trying a long shot.

"Spinoza," I repeated firmly. That was my story, and I intended to stick to it.

He sighed a bit, like one who feels that the situation has got beyond him.

A Masonic initiation ritual ended in tragedy when a man was shot in the head and killed with a gun thought to contain blanks, police said on Tuesday.

They said 47-year-old William James was accidentally killed when Albert Eid, 76, confused a loaded .38-caliber semiautomatic pistol with another gun during the induction ceremony in Patchogue, on New York's Long Island, on Monday night.

An Australian handyman admitted he was stupid to shoot himself in the head with a nail gun in a misguided prank that left him with a nail lodged in his brain.

"His [Mel Gibson's] Leni Riefenstahl defense -- I had other intentions -- does not wash. Of course he had other intentions: evangelical, devotional, commercial. But when you retell a story in which the role of the Jews is central, and take great care to give it the most invidious, pre-Vatican II treatment possible, you can hardly claim, 'I didn't mean it.'"

"Unfortunately, the version Gibson brings to life on the screen has proved toxic over the centuries -- leading to the persecution and killing of millions of Jews at the hands of Christians."

"James Shapiro, professor at Columbia University, who studies and writes about so-called Passion plays and is also Jewish, said he does not believe that either the movie or Mr. Gibson are anti-Semitic. ...

"Mr. Shapiro said Americans have no history of violence against Jews and no Passion play even in Europe caused violence against Jews in the last 250 years."

His problem with the crucifix struck me in a very strange way. This is probably because I have just finished reading Roy Schoeman's book, "Salvation is from the Jews" and compared it to a comment made by Eugenio Zolli, Chief Rabbi of Rome during WWII and Catholic convert, in his book "Why I Became a Catholic." [It is also issued as Before the Dawn. --Ed.] The quote deals with an experience he had around the age of eight, centered on the crucifix that was on the wall in the house of a Catholic friend, in the room that the boys sometimes did homework in. The quote is from pp. 24-25 of Rabbi Zolli's book, and is quoted by Mr. Schoeman on pp. 335-336. It is as follows:

'It seemed that in that white room, and in the presence of the crucifix, one could not help being serene, gentle, and good. Sometimes--I did not know why--I would raise my eyes to that crucifix and gaze for a long time at the figure hanging here. This contemplation, if I may call it that without exaggeration, was not done without a stirring of my spirit.

'Why was this man crucified? I asked myself... Why did so many people follow him if he was so wicked? Why are [the people] who follow this "crucified one" so good... And they adore this crucified one? Why do we boys become so different in the presence of this crucifix?

'This crucified one, moreover, awakened in me a sense of great compassion. I had the same strong impression of his innocence as of his pain... He was in agony....

'He does not cry out in his pain, he does not lament, he does not curse. On his face is no expression of hatred or resentment. The olive branch above his head seems to whisper softly of peace.

'No, He, Jesus, that man--now he was "He" for me, with a capital "H"--He was not bad; He could not have been in any way wicked. Perhaps He was, or perhaps He was not, the "Servant of God" whose canticles we read at school. Perhaps He was, or perhaps He was not, the sufferer of whom the master told us....I did not know. But of one thing I was certain: He was good.

'But then, why did they crucify Him? In the book of Isaiah there are four canticles--42:1-7, 49:1-5, 50:4-9, and 52:13--53:12--which present to us an innocent man, purer than any other in the world. He was stricken and humiliated, exhausted by so much suffering; he dies in silence as in silence he suffered. Then the crowd seems to recover from its fury: "Why have we tormented and put to death Him who bore our sins?"'

I'm sorry for the extra long quote, but I was just stricken by the contrast of the two reactions. Rabbi Zolli answers all the questions Mr. Goldhagen asks, and he tells us that he understood it, at least on some level, as a child of around eight. I'm not sure what it means, if it means anything, except perhaps that "he who has ears to hear, let him hear."

In the past few weeks, speeches by the Massachusetts senator have been broadcast on Radio Pyongyang and reported in glowing terms by the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), the official mouthpiece of Mr Kim's communist regime.

The apparent enthusiasm for Mr Kerry may reflect little more than a "better the devil you don't know" mentality among the North Korean apparatchiks. Rather than dealing with President George W. Bush and hawkish officials in his administration, Pyongyang seems to hope victory for the Democratic candidate on November 2 would lead to a softening in US policy towards the country's nuclear weapons programme.

I have often thought but kept to myself what a gruesome thing they are, traditional crucifixes, each one with the likeness of a mangled, agonized body affixed cruelly to it. I sometimes wondered, even as a child, what kind of a religion would want children to look at an image of a suffering, dying or dead man, with nails piercing his hands. What is its effect upon them? Why would the spiritual leaders of any religion want their flock to gaze regularly at such horror, to gaze lovingly at such horror, to feel exalted at the image of such horror?

Instinctively I have always been uncomfortable around crucifixes, even though I grew up in the Boston area, historically the most privileged kind of environment for a Jew in a Christian world, one that was free of intense or intensely expressed antipathies towards Jews. I never really understood exactly why I felt such discomfort with the crucifix, and since it was not much of a presence in my life, I never asked myself. Perhaps it was because of my historical knowledge, acquired sadly even as a child, of the harm that the followers of the crucifix had inflicted on those who refused to embrace it. But perhaps not. It might have been only or mainly a visceral reaction of a sensitive child. After all, I had become a vegetarian at the age of 10 because I found the sight of meat revolting.

"Movies such as 'The Passion' are not supposed to get made at all, and if they do get made they're not supposed to get made on this epic scale, and if they do get made on this epic scale they're not supposed to succeed, and if they do succeed they're not supposed to succeed on account of guerrilla marketing and promotion. The Hollywood elite's conception of brilliant grass-roots marketing tactics would encompass, say, making 'The Fog of War' -- Errol Morris's documentary starring a self-searching Robert McNamara -- into a hit with a Deaniac campaign on the Internet. But Mel Gibson's 'Passion' being ignited with Bible Belt church tours and licensing deals for souvenir two-inch stigmata nails? That's hard to take. ...

"The Gibson phenomenon makes Hollywood denizens nervous because it brings home the scary power of what they fear most: Bush country. ...

"It's not the supposed anti-Semitism of the movie they're worried about now.... No, it's Mad Mel's vaunted alliance with the alien armies of the right that are determined to return their mortal foe George W. Bush to the White House this November.

"Maybe that's what all the good behavior at the Oscars was really about. Hollywood Democrats think that John Kerry's candidacy is going really well and they don't want to screw it up by being boorish or nasty and giving Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh a lot of new material for their next flattening Eventoid."

"I recently read Richard J. Evans's brilliant 'The Coming of the Third Reich,' in which it becomes clear, if it wasn't before, how violence was so much a part of fascism. It was not merely that Hitler and, to a lesser extent, Mussolini used force to get their way but also that violence, almost for the sake of it, became part of the ethic -- what Evans calls 'the cult of violence.' After awhile, Germans became inured. That, both precisely and surprisingly, is how I felt watching Gibson's disturbingly nondisturbing movie. I was bored stiff."

"The movie is as violent as everyone says -- indescribably and inexcusably gory. But instead of being repulsed, I found myself intrigued: Why wasn't I horrified? Why wasn't I revolted? Instead of feeling any of those things, I was more like the Roman soldiers who tortured Jesus. I did not laugh with glee as they did, but I did find myself at an emotional remove. There was so much blood, so much flayed skin, so much horror that almost immediately I became inured to it all. I felt as a surgeon must in the operating theater or, maybe, as the torturer feels when another 'job' is brought before him. More work. Repeatedly, I found myself checking my watch.

Some Jewish leaders and Christian scholars charge the movie, "The Passion of the Christ," could lead to an upsurge in anti-Semitism because of the way it portrays Jews and their role in Jesus' death.

Aware of those concerns, the Hate Crimes Unit supervisor, Inspector Dennis Blackman, ordered the 20 detectives under his command to see the film after it opened last week.

Sources said about half the cops in the unit have done so so far, viewing the movie during work hours. But brass softened the order to a request - that cops see the movie on their own time - after The Post began asking questions about the "Passionate" new assignment.

A Muslim activist has sued the pope, a top cardinal and other church officials, claiming their comments about the superiority of Christianity violated the Italian constitution.

In a civil suit filed at the Aquila courthouse, activist Adel Smith said he was seeking a court condemnation of the comments, but no monetary or other punitive damages.

Smith, who is president of the Muslim Union of Italy, has previously made headlines for his court battle to have a crucifix taken down from his son's classroom. Several other Islamic organisations distanced themselves from that effort. ...

In the lawsuit, Smith cited a passage of John Paul's 1994 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope in which the pope writes that the "richness of God's self-revelation" in the Bible's Old and New Testament's has been "set aside" in Islam.

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