The Right and Gibson

Here's Kathryn Jean Lopez criticizing someone or other:

It must be helpful to have your own t-word that works to dismiss anything folks you sometimes (or often) disagree with say.
Meanwhile, one can deeply deplore the anti-Semitic reflex and still know one of his movies was a worthwhile — even important — contribution.

I think she must be referring to my recent post. I use the word "theocon" to describe a group of Catholic conservative intellectuals who believe that Thomistic natural law should be our guide to public policy, and that there should be as little separation of civil law from religious law as possible. I know Gibson and his movie are not the same thing. But surely this revelation tells us something about the possible motivations behind someone reviving a medieval anti-Semitic art-form. I wonder, in particular, what Michael Medved is feeling right now. Here's Medved not so long ago, assuring us that anti-Semitism was the last thing motivating Gibson:

Certainly, Gibson's account of the story — in which the Judean priests and the Judean mob force Pilate's hand in ordering the death of Christ — falls well within the Christian mainstream and corresponds to numerous references in the Gospels. Gibson's critics may resent these elements of the drama, but they must blame Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John rather than Mel.

So the Gospels are anti-Semitic but Gibson is not? He continues:

The film seemed to me so obviously free of anti-Semitic intent that I urged Gibson to show the rough cut to some of his Jewish critics as a means of reassuring them... In more than a half dozen conversations with Gibson, I heard him express his passionate desire to avoid hurting the Jewish community or its members... Concerning the issue of blaming contemporary Jews for the crucifixion of Christ, Gibson has made clear in private conversation and in several on-the-record public statements that his personal thinking is far more closely aligned with contemporary church teaching than with the older doctrine that led to so much persecution of European Jewish communities.

How sadly eager Medved was to believe Gibson's pledges of non-bigotry.