Hal Hill’s at Liberty
In the March 11 issue a letter writer (Mr. Thomas) says in part, “I find it unconscionable that as an African American, Mr. Hill would charge an inner-city school $500 to speak during Black History Month.”
Had Mr. Hill been white, would it have been OK for him to charge $500? Had it been, say, Women’s History Month, would it have been OK? Should we infer that it would have been OK if it were a suburban school? I suspect the problem is that Hill dared charge money for his services.
I wonder if Mr. Thomas has a problem with a plumber or a lawyer or an education consultant coming to an inner-city school and charging for his/her services. For that matter, perhaps the African American teachers should, by implication, donate their services during Black History Month.
Mr. Hill speaks for a living. He, of course, charges for it. If he chooses to waive or donate his fee, that is his business. To expect him to do so disrespects his work, the school officials, and the students.
$500 is a very low fee for a speaker of Mr. Hill’s caliber. Speakers who are not nationally known often charge $1,000 to $3,000 or more. Mr. Hill may have already made a “donation” to the school by substantially lowering his fee. We don’t know.
I will not be calling Mr. Hill to encourage him to donate his fee anywhere, because what he does with his fee is his business, just as it is your business what you do with your salary, and Mr. Thomas’ business what he does with his income. I would applaud Mr. Hill (or anyone) for making a donation, but I would certainly not expect him to tell me about it, nor to solicit my advice! That, too, is his business.
Mr. Hill presented the best “teaching” possible by showing students the importance of valuing what you do and expecting compensation for it. Libertarians understand this: self-sufficiency and responsibility go together. So do mutual respect and minding one’s own business.
I believe Mr. Thomas has the best of intentions with his suggestions. It’s understandable he would believe it’s OK to pressure Mr. Hill about how to spend his money because our government regularly takes our money to spend in ways they think best, rather than leaving it to us to decide. But that’s another issue.
Donnell King
Knoxville
Wait for the Disney Version
Lee Gardner, you are a nonsensical babbler. First of all, what do you mean by “inexplicably hateful and conniving Jewish characters?” Since the Jewish leadership didn’t believe Jesus was the Christ, of course they were going to seek His death since Jesus represented a threat to the status quo. But if it really is a “well-known story,” then you must not know what you are talking about.
“It is never adequately explained why the priests and the mobs hate him so.” Ohhhhh, Lee! Do you really need a four-part mini series to learn about Jesus’ persecution? Come on! Then you write that Gibson’s flashbacks hardly acquaint the audience with the “character.” Lee, surely you don’t think of Jesus as just a “character” like Clark Kent or Papa Smurf? The audience must already have a very deep and personal relationship with Jesus already. They, unlike you, don’t need that four-part miniseries.
You undervalue the audience’s rapport with Jesus when you don’t expect them to “spot Caviezel in his wig and beard and instantly care what happens to him.”
Remember Ben Hur? Remember when you just saw this “character’s” face and feet, as he gave Charlton Heston’s character water, or as you saw the same faceless features as Ben Hur tried to do the same for Him as He dragged His cross through the street? Pretty powerful stuff for a faceless “character.” Eleven Oscars, I think. Might want to rent that, Lee. Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and see how often you can spot this “character’s” face, let alone wig.
If you are expecting a movie to develop a relationship with Jesus for you, then you are an idiot. And to presume the same for us, you are doubly so the dolt. Either you have one or you don’t.
And if you can’t stand the “skin rips” and “crimson spatter,” or the “gory hole” you call His mouth, then I suggest you wait for the Disney version to come out.
If Mel Gibson wanted to show as realistic a portrayal as possible, then it is meant to be seen as just that...a realistically enacted vision of Christ’s torture and execution, and any less would be Hollywood, which is all you seem able to handle.
You say “it’s hard to keep identifying with a ‘character’ when you would have dropped dead from shock alone hours before.” Lee, you aren’t meant to identify with Jesus’ treatment. It was meant for one man alone! How can anyone profess to identify with what Jesus went through, and whine when it isn’t possible; I could just see you sitting in the theater cringing and saying to yourself, “Oh, Jeez! There’s no way anyone could last that long...there’s no way I would still be standing.” Mel Gibson wants us to see what Christ willingly subjected Himself to. If all the blood and “yellow staves of ribcage” keep you from feeling a profound thankfulness and affection, I wonder what will.
Well, I guess there’s that Disney four part miniseries.
Maybe they’ll even talk in English and just slap Him a bit just enough to not rile your sensitive nature.
Allen Stanley
Knoxville
An Aussie Boomerang?
Herewith my long-winded two bits on the aptly titled “Gorespell” (Feb. 26).
The Pope was right: “It is as it was.”
Jesus was a Jew. In his religion, allowing oneself to be perceived as divine was blasphemy, heresy. The people were not allowed by law to deal with that, so they inveigled the civil authorities into doing their dirty work for them by raising the specter of insurgence.
The mode of punishment was the norm of the day; criticizing its brutality today is anachronistic. The notion of “cruel and unusual” punishment would have been an oxymoron—just like that of animal “rights.”
Two millennia later, though we debate the ethics of capital punishment, some of us would still love to tear contemporary sect leaders limb from limb. We are still hell-bent on imposing our religious beliefs on others; we use the alchemy of casuistry to transmute actions we deem “sins” into “unethical” behavior, and we then subvert the civil authorities into effectively branding them “crimes” by passing legislation against them. Consider stem cell research.
Umpteen centuries later, a sect leader will have succeeded in having himself accepted as divine, and his religion will have relegated ours to mythologies. Any serious doubts about how devotees of the new religion will view their contemporary new-sect leaders? Barring a mutation that makes us instinctively ethical, Byron was also right: “There is the moral of all human tales; ‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.” (Childe Harold IV. cviii)
Having said all that, I confess the previews of The Passion of the Christ have me decided not to see it. Even if the violence and gore in those snippets were the sum total of it in the whole movie, the same level of it in a non-religious film would raise a hue and cry of extreme pornography—from the same people who sing its praises for historic accuracy. Previews are designed to be a hook. The selection of such sadomasochistic scenes for this hook and the timing of the movie justify the suspicion of some that it knowingly and willfully incites and exacerbates elemental blood-lust, expressed as anti-Semitism: Europe is in the throes of a renaissance of that brotherly love of the historic whipping boy, ably encouraged by our criminally skewed, egregiously pro-Israel foreign policy.
I fear Mr. Gibson’s intent will boomerang, and his passion for his faith will start an avalanche of atrocities that will redound to the detriment of the history of Christianity.
Vivian Leitner
Knoxville
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