George Neumayr on Rich’s insistent criticism of a movie he hasn’t seen.

Rich naturally abstains from all the McCarthyite tactics he deplores. He just doesn’t want the film’s marketing — “a masterpiece of ugliness typical of the cultural moment, when hucksters wield holier-than-thou piety as a club for their own profit” — to succeed.

But it is fitting of the New York Times and its sense of accuracy that The Last Temptation of Christ –a movie that wildly departed from the Gospels, even to the point of having Christ assist at the crucifixion of a fellow Jew — didn’t upset it. But The Passion of the Christ based on the Gospels does. Because Gibson doesn’t treat the Gospels as art — fictions to be reshaped according to liberal sensitivities — he is one artist Frank Rich and the Times won’t respect.