The Passion of the President

redblue175No, I’m not talking about Bill Clinton.

It occurred to me while reading this editorial about Michael Moore’s Bush-bash Fahrenheit 9/11 that something explains the boxoffice success that the film has enjoyed.

It’s no secret that American society today is quite polarized–the whole “red state/blue state” thing–with one group of folks standing for traditional American and Christian values and the other group standing for–well, hatred of traditional American and Christian values.

The first group of folks earlier this year made the incredibly moving film The Passion of the Christ a runaway boxoffice success. Following a pre-release controversy that was a marketing bonanza for Mel Gibson, its core audience was fully alerted to the film’s existence and, since the film was extremely well-made and a celebration of their faith, the audience turned out in droves.

That left a lot of the other folks feeling left out, though.

But they’re not left out any longer. Following a pre-release controversy that was a marketing bonanza for Michael Moore, the core audience for Fahrenheit 9/11 was fully alerted to the film’s existence and, since the film is apparently well-made and is a celebration of its audience’s faith, they are now turning out in droves.

In other words, Fahrenheit 9/11 is the blue states’ The Passion.

Of course, despite the fact that it’s more in line with Hollywood’s blue-state value system won’t mean that it’ll do the same boxoffice as The Passion. It won’t even be close.

In cinematic terms, casting Jim Caviezel as the Christ is far more interesting than casting George W. Bush as the Antichrist.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

13 thoughts on “The Passion of the President”

  1. I think that the map of the counties is more accurate.
    For the midwest, you are looking at Chicago, Madison and Minneapolis/St. Paul, not whole States. For Iowa you are seeing the results of a 20 year long Farm depression, and politicians promising the moon.
    On the counties map, the coastal counties are blue and the rest are red.
    Odd choice of colors. I guess it would have been too cliche to have the Leftist counties be red. . .

  2. “… casting Jim Caviezel as the Christ is far more interesting than casting George W. Bush as the Antichrist.”
    Well, yeah, but Caviezel is only acting.

  3. I agree for the most part with Circuit Rider. The true divide is urban/rural. The tiny dots that are large cities are blue, while the vast expanses of countryside are red. Most suburbs would be purple, I guess, for voting Republican just to keep their taxes low while espousing a more materialistic, non-Christian lifestyle. This coming from a dyed-in-the-wool southern Illinoisan. Of course, these are only stereotypes, except in Illinois, where they are true the vast majority of the time.

  5. Why are urban environments always so much more liberal?
    What is it about population density that makes people become liberals?
    Something in the city air or water?

  7. Actually, it would seem that the more Catholic areas of the country are more liberal.

  8. Hope you do have a post on why cities are more liberal, Jimmy. We just finished an election here in Canada, and that effect was seen here as well. The Conservative Party can’t crack the urban areas, and the Liberal Party is pretty much shut out of rural areas. (The Bloc Québecois, a left wing but separatist party, pretty much took Quebec). NB: with respect to colours, in our case the Liberals do use red and the Conservatives blue. (We also have pretty straightforward party names too!) The New Democratic Party, even more left wing than the liberals, use Orange.

  9. Actually, the most liberal portions of the country tend to be highest in immigrants (California is now almost compltely democratic). So much for the idea that immigrants have such “family values.”

  10. I’ve always wondered why formerly Catholic strongholds like Boston, San Francisco, and New York are so liberal. And I wonder if it might be that Protestants started out so much more puritanical than Catholics. In other words, every group has become more socially liberal since the country’s founding, but Protestants with their Puritan background had farther to go since they started out with such a distrust of sex and alcohol and other good things that can be abused or misused.

  11. TSO,
    Yes, but the Catholics have gone off the deep end since Vatican II. I don’t know of any conservative Catholic areas, but there are at least some protestant areas that are moderately conservative.

Comments are closed.