Stirring passion

MEL GIBSON'S AS YET unreleased movie on the final hours of the life of Christ continues to elicit strong reactions around the globe. The latest come from opposite ends of the spectrum, in more ways than one.

In a New York Times column last week Frank Rich accused Mr. Gibson, for the second time, of intentionally "baiting Jews" to publicize his movie. In what promises to be an ongoing exchange of volleys, Mr. Rich used his column to respond to flippant comments made by Mr. Gibson in The New Yorker, which included the statement, "I want to kill him [Rich].... I want his intestines on a stick.... I want to kill his dog."

The article by Mr. Rich comes less than a month after his first attack on Mr. Gibson's supposed "martyrdom complex." Mr. Rich had argued that Mr. Gibson fabricated Jewish opposition to The Passion to "foment the old-as-Hollywood canard that the "entertainment elite' (which just happens to be Jewish) is gunning for his Christian movie." But then he also argued that the charges of anti-Semitism are, in all likelihood, justified, although Mr. Rich has not screened the film himself.