NP Rank:
Racists, anti-Semites, anti-Catholics: all of them reprehensible
Via Relapsed Catholic: the Catholic League issued a news release today about the Michael Richards "racist tirade". CL president Bill Donohue:
âMichael Richards gets interrupted by hecklers, unleashes a racist tirade, gets blasted by the cultural elite and apologizes. Mel Gibson gets drunk, unleashes an anti-Semitic tirade, gets blasted by the cultural elite and apologizes. Penn Jillette, without any provocation, unleashes an anti-Catholic tirade, gets a free pass from the cultural elite and never apologizes.
âBecause the cultural elite did not blast Jillette, it is worth remembering what he said on his CBS radio show on April 5, 2006. He said that Mother Teresa âhad this weird kink that I think was sexual,â compared her to Charles Manson, and commented that she âgot her [sexual] kicks watching people suffer and die.â This was not the first time he attacked the beloved nun: last year, on Jilletteâs Showtime TV show, he branded her âMother F---ing Teresaâ and called her fellow sisters âf---ing c----.â When I complained to Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom (which owns Showtime, as well as CBS), he wrote a letter defending Jilletteâs âartistic freedom.â
âIn other words, racism and anti-Semitism are unacceptable, even when expressed in frustration or when inebriated, but anti-Catholicism is okay, even when expressed repeatedly and done intentionally. The problem here is not with Richards, Gibson or Jilletteâthe problem is with all the phonies who claim to be horrified by bigotry.â
Mr Donohue is wrong, of course, in his last sentence, the point of the first part of which being simply not true: I expect that he is making a rhetorical effort that I just don't 'get'. Racists, anti-Semites, anti-Catholics are all of them reprehensible.



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