home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
Bush's Worst Appointment Yet? Read Jeffrey St Clair's blazing expose of the new Interior Secretary nominee , Dirk Kempthorne, and make up your own mind. Even in the dingy history of Idaho's predators, Kempthorne stood proud as the dingiest of them all. Now he's poised to seize his place in history. Will he be the sleaziest Interior Secretary in history, sleazier than Watt, fouler than Fall? More on the great Israel Lobby debate! Norman Finkelstein blazes a new path, asks "Are the Neo-Cons really committed Zionists?" "Bliss was it in that dawn" Not in Michigan! Raymond Garcia describes Dem governor's appalling plan to scapegoat youth and teachers. Plus the full print version of Virginia Tilley's savage dissection on this website of the double-standard onslaught on Hamas by the US and EU. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
Today's Stories May 16, 2006 Ted Honderich May 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn William Blum Tanya Golash-Boza
and Douglas A. Parker Dave Lindorff Debra Schaffer
Hubert Patrick Cockburn Tom Turnipseed Ken Livingstone Gideon Levy Mickey Z. Jeff Faux Website of the Day
May 13 / 14, 2006 Vijay Prashad Joan Roelofs Kathy Kelly Michael Neumann Dr. Susan Block Daniel Cassidy Christopher Reed Mike Roselle Saul Landau Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Evelyn Pringle Fred Gardner Stanley Heller Conn Hallinan Valentina Palma Novoa David Krieger Col. Dan Smith Christopher Brauchli Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
May 12, 2006 Michael Snedeker Dave Lindorff Leah Fishbein
/ RJ Schinner Brian Kwoba Chris Kromm Kai Diekmann David Swanson Virginia Tilley Website of the
Day
May 11, 2006 Sunsara Taylor Jonathan Cook Tariq Ali Wayne S. Smith Mike Whitney Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Mickey Z. Francis Boyle Edward S. Herman
/ David Peterson Website of the
Day
May 10, 2006 Werther Larry Birns / Michael Lettieri Ramzy Baroud Kevin Zeese Evelyn Pringle Amira Hass Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Sharon Smith Website of the Day
May 9, 2006 Ray McGovern M. Shahid Alam Moshe Adler Walter MIgnolo Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor William S. Lind Todd Chretien Dave Lindorff Ishmael Reed Website of the
Day
May 8, 2006 Kate McCabe Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Ingmar Lee Robert Jensen Ricardo Alarcon Will Youmans / M. Kay Siblani Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
May 6 / 7, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair Ariel Dorfman Joe Allen Fred Gardner Jeff Taylor Saul Landau Stephen Philion Trish Schuh Ralph Nader Robert Fisk Paul Cantor John Holt James Ryan Lawrence R. Velvel Greg Moses Laray Polk Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Mickey Z. Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Week
May 5, 2006 Vijay Prashad Robert Fisk David Swanson Mearsheimer / Walt Dave Lindorff Sarah Ferguson CounterPunch
News Service Corporate Crime Reporter Website of the
Day
May 4, 2006 John F. Sugg Jonathan Cook Roger Burbach Chris Dols Christopher Brauchli Tony Swindell Website of the Day
May 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Paul Craig Roberts James Petras Lee Sustar David Bolton Joshua Frank Jeffery R. Webber Website of the
Day
May 2, 2006 Evelyn Pringle Tariq Ali Saul Landau Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Sen. Russell
Feingold Anthony Papa Website of the
Day
May Day, 2006 Norman Finkelstein Christopher Reed Michael Donnelly Dave Zirin Mike Whitney Gilad Atzmon Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
April 29 / 30, 2006 Peter Linebaugh Ralph Nader Robert Bryce Rev. William
Alberts Lee Sustar John Chuckman Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Fred Gardner Don Monkerud Tommy Stevenson Lettrist International Contratiempo St. Clair, Vest
and D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
April 28, 2006 James Ridgeway Ramzy Baroud Sarah Knopp William S. Lind Werther April 27, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler Robert Fisk Juan Santos Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Jose Pertierra
April 26,2006 Robin Philpot Sherry Wolf Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Gary
Leupp Bill
Quigley
April 25, 2006 Gary
Leupp Paul
Craig Roberts Linda
S. Heard Ralph
Nader Mike
Whitney Michael
Donnelly Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 24, 2006 Tim
Wise John
Stanton Dave
Lindorff Steve
Shore Amadou
Deme Mickey
Z. Ralph Nader Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
Subscribe Online
|
May 16, 200 Skewering the Patriarchs of the Church Why the Fundamentalists are Freaking Out Over Da Vinci Code By HARVEY WASSERMAN Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? Did they have a daughter? Questions about Christ's love life will dominate debate over the release of the DAVINCI CODE this weekend. The answers do matter. But what really counts is the story's pagan/feminist core, and its role in the Culture War. The spin has begun. As freaked-out fundamentalists focus on Jesus's sexuality, and on petty documentary talking points, they'll try to obscure DAVINCI'S lethal assault on the Church's reactionary male theocracy. What's at stake is not the fine points of documentation and detail. Rather it's the contention that male-dominated Christian/Catholic fundamentalism as a repressive dictatorship that has thrown sexuality and sexuality out of balance. Fiction it may be. But with 45 million copies in print, Dan Brown's DAVINCI is a force of nature. How Ron Howard's upcoming feature film deals with its core content will have significant impact. Opening amidst the catastrophic failure of the macho neo-con Bush putsch and its moral, spiritual and fiscal bankruptcy, it's no wonder the Church hierarchy is mobilizing Rove-style against DAVINCI'S profoundly subversive truths. The dramatic vehicle on which DAVINCI rides is a gimmicky Paris-London-Scotland murder mystery filled with riddles and gadgets. It is saturated with Church intrigue and the usual greed. The documentation around which it's constructed is as inventive as it is irrelevant. For the book's spiritual core---and popular appeal---rests on its invocation and adoration of feminist spirituality and pagan naturalism. With wild invention and literary flair worthy of its namesake, DAVINCI flaunts the heretical, anti-clerical homosexuality of western civilization's leading intellectual superstar. Leonardo's Mona Lisa plays as a coy, cutting smirk, exalting female power and the demand for gender balance. In its most crucial exposition, DAVINCI cuts to the heart of today's culture war, in which the "tradition of perpetuating goddess worship is based on a belief that powerful men in the early Christian church 'conned' the world by propagating lies that devalued the female and tipped the scales in favor of the masculine." The Priory of Sion is DAVINCI's heroic secret society. It worships Mary Magdalene as "the Goddess, the Holy Grail, the Rose, and the Divine Mother." It is dedicated to sexual liberation and a vital balance of the global spirit. It "believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever." In the words of DAVINCI's protagonist, a Harvard professor, the Grail "is literally the ancient symbol for womanhood, and the HOLY Grail represents the sacred feminine and the goddess, which of course has now been lost, virtually eliminated by the Church." These are the ultimate fighting words to a rigid, eco-hating fundamentalist movement that preaches sexual repression and violent male domination, whose prelates "claim to speak the truth about Christ and yet lie to cover up the sexual abuse of children by their own priests." "The power of the female and her ability to produce life was once very sacred," says DAVINCI, "but it posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male church, and so the sacred feminine was demonized and called unclean. It was MAN, not God, who created the concept of 'original sin,' whereby Eve tasted of the apple and caused the downfall of the human race. Woman, once the sacred giver of life, was now the enemy." For today's right wing, She still is. As it mobilizes to fight this story, that will be the core complaint, no matter how carefully concealed. "This concept of woman as life-bringer was the foundation of ancient religion," adds another DAVINCI scholar. "Childbirth was mystical and powerful. Sadly, Christian philosophy decided to embezzle the female's creative power by ignoring the biological truth and making MAN the Creator. Genesis tells us that Eve was created from Adam's rib. Woman became an offshoot of man. And a sinful one at that. Genesis was the beginning of the end for the goddess." Darwin may have marked the beginning of the end for Genesis. But pagan naturalism has never ceased its struggle against the Church of totalitarian testosterone. When the film comes out, the talk/gossip circuit will focus on Jesus's sex life. Best would be for Mel Brooks to counter with a sequel showing mother Mary, the sainted virgin (aren't they all?), nagging poor Jesus (oy! a carpenter!) to get hitched, already. And, of course, he will. For "Jesus was a Jew," says DAVINCI, "and the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned." If so, then what have all these Catholic priests and popes been doing---or NOT doing---for centuries, suffering in what DAVINCI calls the "unnatural state of bachelorhood"? DAVINCI says Mary Magdalene was pregnant at the Crucifixion, and that she mothered "the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ." But "a child of Jesus would undermine the critical notion of Christ's divinity, and therefore the Christian Church, which declared itself the sole vessel through which humanity could access the divine." So the hate-nature anti-feminists have waged a never-ending Crusade to cover it all up. Thus the Grail story "is everywhere but it is hidden," something an effective rendering of DAVINCI in a block-buster film could end. Count on the bloviators to blab endlessly about this detail and that document while avoiding like a plague DAVINCI's searing feminist critique. The fundamentalist right has already gone to war over THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, which dared portray Jesus as being profoundly human (not to mention speaking with a Brooklyn accent). With DAVINCI, the stakes are far higher. Jesus's sex life is one thing, and the documentation surrounding the plotline yet another. But it is the pagan gender war that poses the ultimate threat to the hard-right theocracy of today's neo-con nightmare. Small wonder the fundamentalist fanatics are arming for battle. If DAVINCI the movie gets beyond the petty gossip and Rovian spin, and into the heart of Magdalene's Grail and her liberationist followers, watch for the blood of the patriarchy to warmly flow. Harvey Wasserman is co-author, with Bob Fitrakis, of
How the GOP Stole America's
2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, and author of Harvey
Wasserman's History of the U.S.
|
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |