Rooney then showed clips of Gibson talking to Diane Sawyer about Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. You know what we ought to do today? We’ll post this on the website or we’ll link to it. Roger Ebert of “Ebert & Roeper at the Movies” has reviewed this movie brilliantly. Roger Ebert has reviewed this movie favorably and brilliantly. I read the review earlier this morning. I don’t have it. I didn’t print it out. I just read it on the computer because I, frankly, didn’t know this was going to be coming up today, and I’ve got enough in my stacks of stuff to keep me occupied till tomorrow so I didn’t print it out.
But now, ladies and gentlemen, in the media — in the media — to make, just to buttress my point last hour. Christians, you can make fun of them. Not only can you, you should! It’s the fashionable thing to do. Why, they’re nothing but a bunch of NASCAR-loving, pickup-truck-driving, gun-totin’ hicks who have about a 200-word vocabulary. That is the impression that has been left of Christians today by others in the dominant media culture. When I say “dominate media culture,” I’m not talking about other religions. That’s the point. It is religion. It is people’s devotion to a set of principles that teach right and wrong that so offend those who are not religious.
I’m not talking about competition between religions. I’m talking “the religious left,” if you will, is a group that abhors religion. They’ll come up with their own, and they’ll worship a tree or a rat or some other inanimate object and call it “god” if they dare use the word. [In studio: “We got some trouble again? We got some audio problems? Is that why you’re looking?”] So the bottom line here is it’s been fashionable to make fun of and impugn and criticize Christians for many, many moons, and Andy Rooney just did it. And are you seeing any outrage in the mainstream press?
But you can — in fact, you can not only offend Christians, you’re supposed to try! You’re supposed to have your jollies offending Christians. You haven’t succeeded as a mainstream pop culturalist until you have offended a significant number of Christians. You can’t get in the club until you’ve offended enough Christians. You can’t get in the mainstream culture club unless you have a track record of condemning and ridiculing anybody who happens to have what they would consider a wholesome view of culture and interpersonal relationships.
You have to stand opposed to that. You have to laugh at it and make fun of it, and the people believe in it to be admitted in the pop culture. And if you don’t, you’re not going to get into the pop culture. If you don’t get in the pop culture you’re not getting into Hollywood and you’re not getting in the music business and you’re not going to get on MTV and you’re not going to get invited to the biggest clubs or wherever these people hang out in New York. You’re not going to get books. You’re not going to get any of these things unless you behave according to the rules of the people who make them in the pop culture.
Now, we have the Andy
ROONEY AUDIO: “It doesn’t seem right, but religion has been in the news a lot recently. Pat Robertson says that God has spoken to him and told him that George W. Bush will be reelected because he deserves to be. Here’s Pat Robertson’s exact quote: ‘I think George Bush is going to win in a walk. I’m hearing from the Lord that it’s going to be a blowout.’ The movie by Mel Gibson called ‘The Passion of the Christ’ is the other religious issue in the news. Everyone’s talking about that. The question is whether the Jews killed Jesus Christ who was Jewish, of course. I hadn’t wanted to say –“
RUSH: That’s not — stop the tape! That’s not true. That’s not the question, Andy. You shouldn’t say that till you’ve seen the movie, you big buffoon! That is the mainstream press’s take on this movie. But go read Ebert if you don’t want to believe me. It’s not about that! It’s not about who killed him. When you see this movie, that thought doesn’t even occur to you, Andy. That’s not what the movie is about. I think Andy is a Catholic but, God, you’d never know it.
ROONEY AUDIO: “– anything about this because it seemed like a personal matter, but Pat Robertson isn’t the only one who has heard from God. I heard from God just the other night. God always seems to call at night. ‘Andrew,’ God said to me. He always calls me ‘Andrew.’ I like that. ‘Andrew, you have the eyes and ears of a lot of people. I wish you’d tell your viewers that both Pat Robertson and Mel Gibson strike me as
“‘As far as Mel Gibson goes, I haven’t seen his movie ‘The Passion of the Christ’ because it hasn’t opened up up here yet, but I did catch Gibson being interviewed by Diane Sawyer. Did something right when I came up with her, didn’t I? Anyway, as I was saying. Mel is a real nut case. What in the world was I thinking when I created him? Listen, we all make mistakes,’ God said to me. That’s about all he did say, because I’m sure God has a lot more important things to do than talk to someone on television. My own question to Pat Robertson is this: ‘The election looks as though it could be close, certainly not a blowout. If George W. Bush loses the election to a Democrat, will you become an atheist?’ My question to Mel Gibson is: ‘How many million dollars does it look as if you are going to make off the crucifixion of Christ?'”
RUSH: Well, well, well! How many millions of dollars does it look…? How many millions of dollars have other filmmakers made on other religious acts, Andy? I seem to remember a movie called “The Ten Commandments.” I wonder if you could even make “The Ten Commandments” today. I wonder if anyone in Hollywood would stand for it. At any rate, we don’t need to individually subdivide this piece and talk about it. It speaks for itself. And, by the way, folks, I must tell you: I’m a perfect admirer of satire. Don’t misunderstand. The point is, this is satire, and he’s making fun of some people. And my point is you can make fun of Christians all day long and nobody’s going to condemn you for it because it’s politically correct to do so.
But don’t say something critical of the media and the way they report about minorities in this country, or it will be reported for four months and you will be tarred and feathered for four months about what you’ve said. So this is just to illustrate. It’s perfectly fashionable. In facti t’s the order of the day, to rip Christianity, and this is why this movie has these people so up in arms, because the Andy Rooneys of the world — let me leave him out. I don’t even know. I think he’s just off on a tear here, but the mainstream pop culturalists have actually gotten it in their heads that they have dispatched with the Christian-believing community and rendered it a minority. A minority that they have relegated to kook status. Here comes Mel’s movie, and it threatens them all over again, and so they fight back with any number of things that seek to attack what makes them feel uncomfortable.
So they’re trying to destroy the Gibson movie just like they’re trying to destroy marriage. They’re trying to destroy all these things that cast a negative light on them. Just ignore the Gibson movie if you don’t like it. You know, he financed this with his own money. He didn’t go borrow money. There’s no
You want to see anti-Semitism, go take a look at what the militant Islamists are producing these days. Don’t talk to me about Mel Gibson and anti-Semitism. I mean, even (National director of Anti-Defamation League) Abraham Foxman has had to admit now or had to correct himself that it’s not anti-Semitic this movie. In fact there’s a Jewish person in this movie that emerges as a hero: Simon. This is just… There’s an hysteria, an hysteria that comes from the left, any time
And you didn’t hear about it. There’s no outrage anywhere about this — other than at CBS with all the e-mails and phone calls they’re getting from viewers who were offended. But you don’t see anybody in the media talking about it, and yet I’ll just use myself as an example again: ESPN. Compared to 60 Minutes nobody watches ESPN. On a Sunday morning, one little blurb about the media’s treatment of Donovan McNabb lasted for four months.
So you can see what’s accepted and who’s accepted and what is accepted and who isn’t. You can see the kind of things that are permissible. You can see the kind of things that aren’t. I’ll tell you, you can call it whatever you want, “political correctness” or what have you, but, boy, if you didn’t say the right thing… And the thing that continues to gall me about these people is that during all of this, they claim — the left, these pop culturalist — they claim they are the ones that have all the tolerance. They’re the ones that are saying we’re intolerant, that we don’t…
We’re tolerating lawlessness. We’re tolerating rogue courts. We’re tolerating activist judges. We’re tolerating it so much we’re not even stopping what they’re doing. We’re going to take four years to try to amend the Constitution to stop it. Yippee! Don’t talk to me about tolerance. The people who don’t have tolerance are the people who are trying to force thought police on everybody else, trying to force proper thought, proper expression, proper way of life on everybody else, and if you don’t abide by them, you are the enemy. They are the people that claim to be tolerant. Those people don’t have a thimble’s full of tolerance because intolerance? They know exactly what it is. Intolerance of them is simply people standing up for decency.