Mel Gibson returns :: Jimmy Carter disgraces himself

Mel Gibson's new movie Apocalypto is out, and it's supposed to be pretty good (requires registration). But poor Mel can't escape some well-deserved ribbing - click here for SNL's priceless send-up of the trailer.

And as for bagels, well, see my earlier posting :)

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Jimmy Carter is back as well. You've probably heard about JC's new book on the Israel-Palestine conflict, a new low in post-Presidential books - bad enough to provoke the resignation of the head of the Carter Center, Ken Stein. (Carter then denied that Stein had anything to do with the Carter Center - Alzheimer's? See for yourself.) Given his earlier history of humbuggery with North Korea, Rwanda, Venezuela, etc., is this any surprise?

Lots of people have been all over the book since it was released, and Jimmy is in deep trouble with the discovery of the book's plagiarism, fallacies, half-truths, and historical and geographical errors. Especially damning is Carter's apparent rip-off and silent changing of maps and tables from former ambassador Dennis Ross's much more important book on the same subject. See here and here for two important reviews. (And see here for more from Dershowitz.) Doesn't anyone edit books any more?

Carter's claims to moral leadership are questionable, starting with his fence-straddling during the civil rights years. And let's not forget how Carter abandoned the Shah, which Iranians themselves now regard as a catastrophic mistake, for failing to take radical Islam for what it is. That year, 1980, marked the Great Change in the Middle East, the decline of nationalism and Marxism and the rise of jihad.

Carter is the most recent in a long line of self-important Christians who enjoy lecturing Jews on how to be better Christians. Consider Hugh Fitzgerald's hilarious definition of Carterism: An extreme form of holier-than-thou self-righteousness, prompted by a manic desire for self-aggrandizement .... And on a more serious note, ponder Fitzgerald's careful discussion of a well-known mental pathology and how it presents in Carter's case. Is he just an old-fashioned Christian anti-semite? No, he's a new- fangled, pseudo-liberal preacher of fake piety, who once called Khomeini "a man of faith I can trust." For his and our sakes, it would be best if Carter refrained from any further political embarrassments.

BTW, Fitzgerald and Spencer are stellar among Christian writers against jihad for being entirely free of this same mental disorder, making them quite different in this respect from, say, Pat Buchanan, even though all three are serious Catholics. Fortiter in re, suaviter in modo. Maybe Mel could use that advice too.