Usually they arrive as part of a mass mailing undertaken by individuals who seem to spend their lives adding name after name to their file of e-mail recipients. And if you’re not fortunate enough to have been included on one or another of the lists maintained by these busybodies, you can rest secure in the knowledge that someone who did make the list will helpfully forward you the latest ravings making the rounds of cyberspace.
A particularly ridiculous piece of e-mail currently circulating concerns the supposed plans of Steven Spielberg to counter Mel Gibson’s controversial film “The Passion of the Christ.” The text of that e-mail follows:
Hollywood mega-hit Producer and Director Steven Spielberg has decided to fight fire with fire. He’s announced that since Mel Gibson is fueling the fires of anti-Semitism in the world with his movie about the last hours of Christ, Spielberg will make a graphic movie about the Crusades.
“In order to get Jews and Moslems to convert to Christianity,” Spielberg commented, “Christians went through Europe and into the Middle East forcing conversions on non-believers. Along the way they raped, beat, bludgeoned, maimed, tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. I will show Christian brutality in a realistic and most graphic and gory way.”
Spielberg went on to add that the movie will have a well-deserved anti-Christian tone. “Let’s face it, Gibson wants to blame the Jews for the death of one person we didn’t even kill. I will show the inhuman brutality of thousands of Christians against hundreds of thousands of people of other faiths, about which historically there is no ambiguity as to who is to blame.”
Spielberg said that if this movie is successful, he is likely to follow it up with “The Spanish Inquisition,” a historical film on the torture and murder of the Jews of Spain by the Catholic Church. “To complete the trilogy,” Spielberg announced, “in 2006 I will be filming ‘Hitler and the Pope: A Team Formed in Hell.’ That should generate some heated debate.”
After receiving this laughable account from four different sources, the Monitor turned to one of the Internet’s most valuable resources, the hoax-busting website Snopes.com. Here’s what the folks over at Snopes had to say about a story that?s such an obvious fabrication, it’s a wonder anyone over the age of six accepted it at face value:
“We don’t yet know who penned this piece, but it’s clearly a satirical response to the tremendous box office success of (and criticisms regarding anti-Semitism in) producer/director Mel Gibson’s film about the last hours of Jesus, The Passion of the Christ. Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg (who is Jewish) certainly hasn’t announced any plans to helm a film about the Crusades, or to undertake any of the other over-the-top projects also mentioned here.
A spokesperson for Steven Spielberg issued the following statement: “A vicious, totally fabricated story has been circulating on Internet message boards purporting to be about Steven Spielberg planning graphic films about the Crusades; The Spanish Inquisition; and Hitler and the Pope. The perpetrators of this hoax go so far as to allude to made-up comments from Mr. Spielberg. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reading the entire message makes it even more absurd….He urges everyone who received the original message to let their own friends and contacts know the truth.”
“In fact, Spielberg’s only comment on The Passion of the Christ so far has been . . . no comment: Declaring himself “too smart to answer a question like that,” Steven Spielberg deftly sidestepped the controversy surrounding fellow filmmaker Mel Gibson’s box office smash…which has been accused of anti-Semitism.”