By Debbie Schlussel
America, you’ve regressed a long way, baby. As in, HusseinObamaJudenrein.
Remember when Black people couldn’t live in certain neighborhoods? If you’re a liberal Kennedy, you don’t need to remember, because the time is now. Several of the Kennedy family homes have restrictive covenants forbidding the sale of the homes to Blacks (and some of them to Jews, too).
Well, no wonder the Kennedys liked Barack Obama for President. He’s buying into the restrictive covenant and redlined neighborhood idea . . . but in another country.
Yup, Barack Hussein Obama–a Black President, whose own father–had he grown up in America, would be shut out of owning a home in certain neighborhoods–is now pushing bigoted ethnic-based housing policies on Israel.
He says, “no Jews can live here,” about portions of Israel that were the ancient grounds of Jewish history, portions of Israel where the Jewish patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob–and Joseph, though Palestinians destroyed his tomb–are buried.

Jews Not Wanted Here

US President Barack Obama said Monday after crucial talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israeli settlement building in the West Bank must be “stopped.”

Sickening.
Eugene V. Rostow, the American who negotiated key U.N. Resolutions regarding what was and wasn’t Jewish land and the so-called “settlements”–which can mean neighborhoods of Jerusalem and its suburbs. And the fact is Rostow’s position was that such settlements are not “illegal” under U.N. or international law. Read his article on this issue. Given this, where does a foreign leader–in this case, Obama–get off telling a country where Jews can live and how it must “redline” its neighborhoods? That is illegal in America.
Why is this apartheid okay for America to dictate to Israel?
Hmmm . . . I think Binyamin Netanyahu ought to tell Barack Obama that he wants no new homes built for Black people in Brooklyn and no new homes for non-Mexicans in the the San Diego area.
That’s essentially what’s going on here.
There was a time–not long ago–when Jews in many neighborhoods in America were told they were not allowed. Usually the signs read, “No Dogs or Jews Allowed.”
Good news. For Barack Obama, in the so-called “West Bank,” dogs are now allowed. Yes, we’ve “evolved.”

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
Reader Squirrel3D recently commented on this site,

Twitter is the most overrated useless service at the moment, and it amazes me how you of all people even bought into it.

He has a point. But I use my Twitter account (follow me here) to promote this site and my views to new readers and to learn of interesting items from other like-minded thinkers online. It is useful for that purpose. It is also useful for another purpose. For information. Some people are stupid enough to put it out there. High profile people. People who are running for office and want your vote. People like Michigan’s pan-Islamist Republican Attorney General Mike Cox. His inane but revealing tweets can be found here.

Mike Cox Speaking @ Pro-HAMAS/Pro-Hezbollah ADC Banquet
Honoring Winners of Restrictive, Racist Essay Contest
As I’ve told you before, Cox hangs out at extremist Islamic organization dinners, where everyone there (and perhaps him, too) openly supports HAMAS and Hezbollah, and he hangs with individuals who have made openly anti-Semitic comments and statements in writing and for broadcast. I’ve written much more on this sleazy pol who continues to allow pregnant Muslim foreign alien women to defraud Medicaid and get citizenship for their kids, who allowed illegal aliens to get Michigan Driver’s Licenses for five years, and who took campaign contributions from his friend, Hezbollah agent and federally convicted insurance defrauder Ali Jawad (who has two wives).
Now, on Twitter, Cox has basically telegraphed to us that he spends all day long campaigning for Governor (and tweeting), including at extremist Hezbollah Mosques, like the American Muslim Society, well known for its pro-Hezbollah sermons and activities. Look at how Cox spent Friday. Hmmm. . . . taxes, homeschooling, and a Hezbollah mosque–not one of these has a single thing to do with the business Michigan taxpayers pay the Attorney General of Michigan to do. Not a single one. Can you imagine keeping your job, if you neglected it, and tweeted all day long how you were attending job interviews for a job you’d like to have in three years? You’d be fired instantly.
But not Mike Cox. Here’s what he’s been up to . . .



Mucho Thanks to David Lunde/Lundesigns for Extracting These Images
Also of note, the mosque Cox visited, the American Muslim Society is Michigan’s oldest mosque, at 70 years old. That should tell you something about the history of Muslims in Michigan where they first came and where they have the largest concentration in North America. They’re fairly new, they are interlopers, and they don’t have a history with us. Most Michigan synagogues are far older, and there are synagogues in the state that are more than 200 years old. Jews helped settle Michigan and found towns here. Muslims helped radicalize them and turn them into satellite states of Greater Barbaria.
That’s what the man who wants to be Michigan’s next Republican Governor is celebrating. And that’s why I’m supporting his Republican opponent Pete Hoekstra (his twitter account is here), who doesn’t pander to these extremists and go to comfort them every time they whine about a paper cut. He understands the threat that they are.
**** UPDATE: One thing I forgot to mention is that the Liliputian Mike Cox is the signatory to a pro-Israel resolution signed by some other states’ attorneys general. But that’s just more evidence of what a political whore this guy is and how he plays both sides. We saw this on display in 2006 during the Israel-Hezbollah war, when Cox had himself inserted into a pro-Israel rally. Just weeks later, though, he made it a point to be one of the very few politicians appearing and glad-handing extremists at the pro-Hezbollah Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan dinner.
The guy is a two-faced Napoleonic snake, and unlike far too many Republicans and self-professed conservatives, I do not worship the ground he slithers on.

By Debbie Schlussel
I’ve already reviewed “Angels & Demons.” The other new movie out, this weekend, is the documentary “Tyson.”
I think it’s hard to actually call this a “documentary,” because it doesn’t document anything. It’s Mike Tyson going on and on about his life, and there’s simply nothing new in it. There are no interviews with anyone else. It’s just a video ode to a guy that doesn’t deserve one. Mike Tyson is a thug, and an uncivilized monster who messed up every single thing in his life. And he converted to Islam. But, then, I repeat myself.

Tyson talks about how he enjoyed robbing White people and sleeping around. And he tries in vain to use big words that sound important, but yet he doesn’t know what they mean and uses them improperly. My favorite part is when he tells us how he met everyone important, including the “President of Istanbul.” There is no President of Istanbul (but there is a President and a Prime Minister of Turkey). He can’t travel to South Africa to meet his idol and friend, Nelson Mandela, “because of probation problems.” No kidding.
My other favorite part is when Tyson tells us of his conversion to the “Religion of Peace,” as Mike Tyson really is emblematic of most of the soulless, thuggish, empty Americans who try to find who they don’t have in Islam, and don’t get anything new from it, but for extremism:

When I was in jail, I lost faith in G-d. I became a Muslim in prison, but I really lost faith in myself. When I first took my shehadah [DS: Islamic oath of martyrdom, the uttering of which makes one a Muslim], I became extreme. I used Islam because I was bitter at the world. I was full of hate.

Yup, that sounds like your typical Muslim convert. Or just typical Muslim, period. Sadly, Tyson goes on to try to rehabilitate Islam and tell us of the “true Islam,” bragging of his Islamic, Che Guevara, and Mao tattoos and how ahead of his time he was to admire these scumbags. You trendsetter, you. But we can’t forget his famous statement to Lennox Lewis, which strangely now includes what our media left out at the end–the part about Allah.

I want your heart. I want to eat his children, praise be to Allah.

The most disgusting part of the movie are scenes of mobs of fans (most of them White) greeting this thug, Tyson, when he gets released from prison on rape charges, and watching this brainless mob follow him to the mosque, the first place he goes (to pray).
Tyson’s statements about how his character in relation to Islam is one of the few insights in this entire movie. The rest of just crap, unless you consider Tyson’s disgusting, vulgar renditions of some of his sexual escapades and how he “grew up in a promiscuous neighborhood, a promiscuous family, my mom was promiscuous, everyone was promiscuous, everyone was like suck my d—, lick my p—-,” an “insight.” (And as if that somehow excuses his animal-like behavior.) Anyone who reads a paper or watched a news report knows that sex is rampant in the ghetto. It’s no revelation when Tyson tells us how he got gonorrhea “from a prostitute or a filthy woman or something.” That he can’t remember is a pretty good indication that someone needs to look in the mirror when he tells us about “filth.”
We also know that racism is, too. Tyson tells us that a fighter who is White was a “punk-assed White boy,” and that when the late trainer Cus D’Amato took him into his home in the suburbs, “I wanted to rob those White people.” Tyson does admit that while he hated White people, he chose as his handler, the man who stole a lot of his money–the

wretched, slimy reptilian motherf–ker Don King. This is supposed to be my Black brother. I attacked him in front of these old, decrepit White women. They probably thought I was some Black heathen or something. But I stomped him and I stomped him and I stomped him.

And after that beating and some legal battles, King only gave him back “a small amount” of his money.

He finally gave me a small amount of money. It waas like 20 or 30 million or something. I don’t know how much, but it was really small.

Ah, Tyson–always the guy to have everything in perspective. And not violent either, like in the case of dining on Ear of Evander (Holyfield) or Leg of Lennox (Lewis).

I wasn’t upset with myself that I bit his ear, but that I lost my composure. At that point, I didn’t care about the fight. He hurt me, and I wanted to inflict the most pain possible against him.

Let’s hear it for Tyson perspective and maturity.
Way to go, Mike. Whatta guy. On the other hand, it is Don King, so I think we can give him a pass.
On the other hand, the perpetually sick-in-the-head Tyson tells us he liked people who were leeches. “I wanted them to suck my blood.” And how could you find a bigger leech than King, whom some stupid Republicans glommed onto in 2004 when he said he was voting for Bush?
It’s much of the obvious: Tyson telling us how he became a big boxer, how he made and spent most of his money, how he had so many women, how his obtrusively ugly face tattoo represents a Maori warrior (funny, he doesn’t look Maorish), how he didn’t really beat Robin Givens, and how the rape charges against him were made up (I do believe this claim, but not because he said so). Probably the funniest line is when Tyson speaks of getting sent to a juvenile detention center at age 12, where he runs into many of his equally youthful criminal consorts.

All of my friends that I hadn’t seen in a while, and I wondered where they went–they were there. Going to juvenile detention, it was like a class reunion.

One interview clip the movie shows is that of Tyson telling a TV interviewer:

I want to put the bourgeoisie and the erudites in their place–you know, all the people who think I’m trash and I’m scum. I’ll be trash and scum, but I’ll be angelic trash and scum.

Huh? You keep telling yourself that, Rusted Iron Mike. Leave bad attempts at working class bonhomie to the professionals. This is definitely a case where bourgeoiesie and erudites are underrated.
Finally, Tyson tells us some truth:

I never left the street corner . . . . I’m an insane individual.

No kidding. But did I need to sit through more than an hour of Mike Tyson yapping, as if he’s giving me some holy insight, to hear him utter the obvious?
I had to laugh, this morning, when I heard director James Toback say his movie explores the “depths,” “inner poignancy,” and “existential abyss” that he claims is Mike Tyson.
Sorry, but after watching this movie, I didn’t see any of that. Not even close. But maybe with enough such fertilizer from the director, something will grow.
On second thought . . . nah.
TWO MARXES

By Debbie Schlussel
On Monday, Barack Obama “welcomes” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to the White House to pressure him to further amputate Israel for the purpose of creating a Muslim terrorist state for the Palestinians.
Our friend, the great Carl in Jerusalem, posted a terrific, must-see cartoon on how the land-for-“peace” negotiations should be conducted. Carl also has some good commentary on Netanyahu v. Obama on Iran, which will definitely be part of their Monday discussion.
But if you live in the Washington, DC area or anywhere close, your voice and presence are needed to rally against the pressure. Lori Lowenthal Marcus sends this important notice. If you can, I urge you to attend:

WHEN: Monday, May 18th, 10:00 am – 2:00 pm Eastern

Smiling Faces, Sometimes They Don’t Tell the Truth

WHERE: Lafayette Park, across from the White House, Washington, D.C.
WHO: Everyone who cares about America, Israel, and the fight for continued freedom
WHAT: Join me at the May 18th White House Vigil when Israeli PM Netanyahu meets with Pres. Obama.
There is immense worldwide pressure on Netanyahu to acquiesce in the creation of a terrorist Arab Palestinian state on Israel’s borders.
Prime Minister Netanyahu needs to SEE each of us standing in front of the White House. Pres. Obama does too.
Bring signs, American & Israeli Flags, Prayer Books and Shofrim (Ram’s Horns), food and water, and dress weather appropriately.
You needn’t be there for the whole vigil, but you do need to be there.

Again, if you are in the area or can make it there, I urge you to show up. It’s important.

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATES; Read Fed Documents ****
On the one hand, this card-carrying member of the “Religion of Peace” stole $9 million from a water company. That’s bad. On the other hand, we should be happy that he didn’t poison the water . . . as far as we know.

A former water-company employee is being sought on a federal warrant on charges that he fled the country after wiring $9 million of the firm’s money into overseas bank accounts on the same day he resigned, court records show.
Abdirahman Ismail Abdi, who turns 33 on Monday, was named in a warrant alleging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. He also faces charges of grand theft and unauthorized computer access in Santa Clara County.

“Religion of Peace”

Abdi resigned April 27 from his job at California Water Service Co. in San Jose. Authorities say that Abdi used a computer at the firm that evening to send $9.2 million into bank accounts in Qatar.
The transactions were later flagged as suspicious, authorities said, and the money was returned to Cal Water, a privately owned water utility with 460,000 customers in California.
Abdi fled to Canada after sending his wife and two children to Germany.

Many questions? Who is this guy? Where is he from? Somalia? The name sounds Somalian? How did he get his job at a water company? And how the heck did he get access to $9.2 mill at the company? Sounds like someone else would have to be in on all of this.
Like I said, we’re lucky he didn’t poison the water, but if he was in a position to steal $9.2 million, he was in a position to do a lot of other things.
Scary, indeed.
A prediction: I’d bet the FBI–the lead agency on terrorism investigations–is involved in the investigation. Just a hunch.
**** UPDATE: There’s more on Abdi that makes you wonder how this guy got access to $9.2 million or even a job with a drinking water company. He’s an illegal alien and–I was right–from Somalia, who was ordered deported four years ago. Is this yet another example of illegal aliens “doing the job [stealing $9.2 million] that Americans just won’t do”?

Local prosecutors and police determined that Abdi has been trying to flee the country since at least May 1, when he tried to book a flight to London just days after police searched his South Bay home.
Court papers show that Abdi, 32, resigned from his job as an auditor for the San Jose water company April 27 and was spotted by a janitor returning that night to the office of a former co-worker. The following morning, water officials discovered that Abdi had engineered three wire transfers totaling more than $9 million from the company’s accounts to an account in Qatar. The accounts were frozen and the money returned to the water company, according to court papers.
But San Jose police then closed in on Abdi, finding that he had put his wife and two children on a plane to Frankfurt, Germany, on April 28. Officials believe Abdi fled the country, perhaps to Canada, on May 5, according to a letter sent last week from the district attorney’s office to San Jose federal prosecutors.
California Water Service delivers drinking water throughout the state, including Los Altos and parts of Cupertino, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View and Sunnyvale.

And here’s the money quote:

According to the same letter, Abdi is not a U.S. citizen and was ordered deported to Somalia in 2005.

The legacy of Julie L. Myers a/k/a the former “ICE Princess”–the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for most of the time since Abdi was ordered deported–keeps on giving.
Yup, let’s hear it for going after employers and not illegal alien workers.
**** UPDATE #2: Read the federal documents filed so far the in federal criminal complaint against Abdirahman Ismail Abdi. The documents, including FBI agent David M. Brown’s affidavit (told you the FBI was involved), answer a few questions, but much less than they raise. For instance, a letter from the Santa Clara District Attorney’s office to the U.S. Attorney’s office states:

Abdi had been ordered in absentia to be deported on May 15, 2005 to Somalia. ICE records indicate that he departed the US. However on May 20, 2005 Abdi attempted to reenter the US through Blaine Washington. He was denied entry.

So, how did he eventually get back into the United States, and how did he get a job with this drinking water company?
Would love to know the answers to these question, but I’ll bet we’ll never get them.
I’ll also bet that the $9 million-plus was headed for Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab in Abdi’s native Somalia. The FBI’s involvement here is not a coincidence.

By Debbie Schlussel
Last year, I told you about Bush Administration plans to give the United Arab Emirates our nuclear technology, even though the UAE does a ton of business with Iran and is a transfer point for vital components in Iran’s nuke development. I called it “Son of Dubai Ports.” (I also told you a month ago about a video of a UAE prince horribly torturing a man. More on that below.)
It’s not just the fact the the UAE was central to money laundering, bank accounts, and identity documents for the 9/11 hijackers and their murder of 3,000 Americans, and that the UAE refused to cooperate with the FBI for months afterward. And it’s not just that the UAE continued to recognize the Taliban into December 2001, despite our outcry. Nor that, in addition to funding Bush’s loser brother, Neil Bush, the confederation of seven emirates also funded anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying speakers, books, and programs implicating Israel, the U.S., the Jews, and the CIA in 9/11, not Bin Laden.

It’s that it’s extremely stupid to give our nuclear technology to any Islamic nation that has a history of anti-American behavior and a simultaneous, continuing history of cozying up to the Iranian madmen leaders and their Ayatollahs. I call this, “Son of Dubai Ports.” But sadly there isn’t the outrage the Dubai Ports attempt to control our ports stirred up throughout America.
Also sad, the Obama Administration has been aggressively following through on the Bush plan to sign a treaty with the UAE and give them our nuke secrets.
But something has delayed all that. Yes, it takes a torture video. You’ll recall that a month ago, I brought you the video of UAE Prince, Sheikh Issa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, torturing an Afghan grain farmer, whom he claims cheated him out of $5,000. The video–which he made, so he could watch it later as entertainment–shows the prince forcing the man to eat sand, beating him, hitting him with a wooden plank with a nail in it, pouring gasoline on the man’s testicles and setting them on fire, driving nails into the man’s anal flesh, electrocuting him with a cattle prod, shooting at him, and driving back and forth over him with a Land Rover SUV. I’ve re-posted brief excerpts of the video, above.
Well, apparently, the Obama Administration is disturbed enough by this video–which isn’t news to anyone who follows the torture and inhuman behavior of these Gulf Arab states–that it is delaying the legislation currently before Congress to ratify the UAE-US nuclear pact. Credit goes to Democrat James McGovern–not the Republicans–for raising concerns about giving our nukes to this torturing, barbaric country. But this video shouldn’t have been the impetus. The UAE’s behavior is well-known and long-term.
And, as we know, this is only momentary, unless there is an outcry from Americans at large, the way there was when Dubai sought to control our ports.
You see, General Electric, Westinghouse Electric, and several foreign companies (from France and South Korea) are seeking to build the Emirates’ first fleet of nuclear reactors. It’s worth $20 billion-plus to them. And they will grease the skids of enough Congressman and Senators to get this through, and sell us down the river.
At that point, it will be only a matter of how fast Iran gets its hands on our most vital nuclear technology.
Brilliant.

By Debbie Schlussel
It’s Free Chocolate Friday, again. As I told you last Friday, every Friday through the end of September is Free Chocolate Friday, meaning that under Mars’ “Real Chocolate Relief Act,” you can get a coupon for a free Mars chocolate candy bar. Yes, I know it’s not healthy. But every once in a while won’t kill you.
Go here for the details and link to free chocolate.

By Debbie Schlussel
Leave it to CNN, the Coran News Network (or Crescent News Network, take your pick).
While the rest of us are looking at ways to save, cut back, and get ahead in this tough economy, CNN thinks it’s something that needs to be examined by religion. Because, as we all know, we Jews and Christians pay different prices at the gas pump and supermarket than Muslims, who are more “victimized” by tough economic times. The register at checkout recognizes their inner crescent and automatically jacks up the prices. Right?
Well, since CNN couldn’t plausibly go ahead and seriously make that absurd charge, they made a different one–almost as absurd. Times are tough because a Muslim couple has important expenses . . . like starting a chapter of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). an unindicted HAMAS terrorist financier.

Lori Saroya: Muslim Chick Making $120K Hardest Hit in Tough Economy
b/c She Has Sharia Mortgage & Has to Start CAIR Chapter
In its “Religion and Money: The Price of Faith” series, CNN tells us the story of three different couples–Muslim, Christian, and Jewish–and how they have certain specific struggles in this economy. I couldn’t find the Jewish couple’s story–it’s been removed, probably because the Muslim couple insisted on erasing the Jews from the CNN (site) map.
But the Muslim couple’s story is just so touching. Kashif and Lori Saroya make almost $120,000 a year. But the poor things, dear souls that they are, have to pay $1,800 extra per year for a Sharia-complaint mortgage they insisted on undertaking. Oh, the unfairness.
And then there’s their CAIR chapter–an expense that those Jews and Christians don’t have to do, and it’s not fair.

They make $117,500 a year. But they don’t spend much on themselves. Their biggest outlays are on community service work. Lori estimates that, for one, she’s spent about $15,000 to establish the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which advocates for Muslims facing discrimination.

Correction: It advocates for Muslims discriminating. This is “community service work”? More like service against the community.
But, anyway, Muslims starting CAIR chapters . . . the Americans hardest hit in our economy.
Reader Juli:

It stopped me in my tracks: part
of the Muslim woman’s financial hardship involved setting up a local
chapter of CAIR. How nice.

Yup. But that’s the CNN agenda. Teaching Muslims to love terrorist groups and hate non-Muslims is expensive. But, apparently, a CAIR chapter is now an economic necessity in America.
Disgusting.

By Debbie Schlussel

The United States remains unique and ahead of other countries for births to single mothers not in a cohabiting partnership.

–Demographer Patrick Heuveline of the University of California-Los Angeles.
YAY! Let’s hear it for us. Suddenly this is “unique” and being “ahead.” Absurd.
The “good” news, if you can call it that: “only” 40% of births in the United States are to single mothers–as compared to 66% in Iceland and other similarly higher rates in several other European countries. Several other European and Western countries have far lower rates of illegitimacy than we do.

And, as Heuveline says, even the European countries with higher out-of-wedlock birthrates than the U.S. have these births to women in stable non-marital relationships. In the U.S., these women are completely by themselves, and the kids have no father figure. GUH-REAT.
Even more great news:

Other U.S. findings for 2007:
* 60% of births to women ages 20-24 were non-marital, up from 52% in 2002.
* Almost one-third (32.2%) of births to women 25-29 were non-marital, up from one-quarter (25.3%) in 2002.
* Births to unmarried women totaled 1.7 million, 26% more than in 2002.

Yup, let’s hear it for the Bristol Palin lifestyle. BabyMamaZ = Cool. And we wonder why America is collapsing.
Remember when everyone was attacking Dan Quayle for attacking TV single mom “Murphy Brown”?

By Debbie Schlussel
**** WARNING: There are a number of spoilers in this review of the movie, “Angels & Demons.” If you don’t want to know these spoilers and the ending of the movie, don’t read any further than the first three paragraphs of this review. ****
As readers know (and as I’ve noted on this site), my biggest objection to the movie, “Angels & Demons“–which opens tonight in theaters at Midnight–is that director Ron Howard changed the identity of the assassin in the movie from Muslim to “Danish.”
After seeing the movie, full of scenes in which “the preferiti”–high ranking Vatican priests with the best shot of becoming Pope–are tortured and slaughtered to death in various explicitly gruesome ways, I can see why it was so important for this character to remain a Muslim in the movie, as he was in the book. And why Ron Howard, a PC liberal, was so eager for a Muslim not to be portrayed doing such horrid things that are carried out by the minute throughout the “Danish” Middle-East.

After all the most nearly successful modern attempt on a Pope’s life was committed by Mehmet Ali Agca . . . clearly, a Danish name. And we don’t want Catholics seeing a Muslim carrying out such hideous tortures and murders of priests because, after all, the “Religion of Peace” would never ever do such a thing and never has throughout it’s history over the centuries. In fact, Director Ron Howard and scriptwriter Akiva Goldsman went out of their way to have this non-descript, non-Muslim assassin utter lines about how the Jewish G-d, allah, and the Christian G-d are all the same and all murderous. Yup, love that anti-religious moral equivalency lumping us Judeo-Christians with the religion of Greater BarbArabia.
**** SPOILERS BEGIN HERE ****
That said, for the first two hours and five minutes of the two-hour, twenty-minute “Angels & Demons,” I thought, “WOW, this is a great movie, and very pro=Catholic, too.” But, then, when the heroic Irish Catholic priest who is the adopted son and personal assistant to the Pope suddenly becomes not the young moral superman and hero we thought, but instead a crazed murdering, torturing monster, the movie lost me. The movie lost me, especially because the reason the padre did this was because he was against science. Pure propaganda.
Even though I’m no Catholic–I’m a Jew–I am pro-life and against embryonic stem cell research, just like the Vatican. Does this mean I am “against science”? Does this mean that my religious leaders would set of a chain reaction of torturous murders of top clerics and try to blow up an entire major city . . . all just to fight science? Are those of us who are conservative on social issues and don’t want the “brave new world” scenario–are we all monsters?
The movie slapped me with this message basically in the second to last scene of the movie. It was such a buzzkill. Until then, my only reservation, other than the Muslim whitewash, was the repeated scenes of priests being branded, tortured, and killed in disgusting ways. That was painful to watch, and I hope it doesn’t give nuts copycat ideas. “101 Ways to Torture and Kill a Priest” isn’t a video manual we needed (especially when, in the original “Angels & Demons” book, it’s more like, “101 Muslim Ways to Torture and Kill a Priest”).
And that’s sad, because until then, I loved this movie. It was fun, exciting, suspenseful and thrilling (if kinda gruesome). The special effects are fantastic, the scenes of Rome and the statues inside old churches–most of which are likely Hollywood sets and computer generated images–were stunning. I found it extremely entertaining and enjoyable.
The story: The Pope has just died, and a new one must be chosen by Vatican Cardinals. Symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is invited by the Vatican to help in a desperate crisis. Someone has kidnapped four “preferiti” (Cardinals favored to become the next Pope). That same person assassinated a priest working at a supercollider and stole a dangerous vial of “anti-matter,” which could blow up a major city.
The kidnapper threatens to murder one of them each hour for four hours. At the end of the day–at Midnight–the killer will let the anti-matter explode all of Vatican City and parts of Rome. The kidnapper has identified himself as part of the Illuminati, a mysterious ancient society of scientists at war with the Catholic Church.
Dr. Langdon, with his knowledge of symbols and ancient societies like the Illuminati, is brought in to try to decipher hints of where the preferiti are being held. Also there is a female scientist who headed up the supercollider anti-matter project. They work with the Vatican City’s Swiss Guard and the help of the late Pope’s adopted son/personal assistant, a young Irish Catholic priest. It is a race against time to find the priests before they are murdered one by one and then everyone is blown to kingdom come.
I didn’t find this movie to be anti-Catholic. If anything–despite the murderous, anti-science, young Priest (which was definitely objectionable, not to mention preposterous)–the movie is endearing to the Catholic Church and far better than “The Da Vinci Code.” The Church and its traditions is contrasted with the absolute pronounced agnostic and nearly-atheist bent of Robert Langdon, whom you can tell must have a tiny shred of belief somewhere under all of his elitist Harvard scientist armor.
Yes, overall, it is a positive portrayal of the Catholic Church, including the very end. But it is not a positive portrayal of those of us who are morally conservative and have ethical dilemmas with brave new world technologies–a core position of the Church. We are not against science. In fact, many of us, like me, embrace science, which has made our lives easier and helped us to develop cures and better treatments for diseases, etc.
But that doesn’t mean we have to embrace science’s extremes. Nor that we have to accept this otherwise great movie’s portrayal of us as extremists.
TWO REAGANS (Would have been THREE, but One Reagan Deducted for Muslim Whitewashing in Script and Phony Anti-Science Extremism)