Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:
“An Off-Broadway play that was scheduled to open last night was nixed because Jews who were polled about the theme found it to be offensive. The person who censored the play is the same artistic director who criticized his theater in 1998 for not supporting an anti-Catholic play.
‘A movie whose title might have offended Muslims was dropped by a major Hollywood studio. The same studio is now associated with a film that one of the co-producers has labeled ‘conservatively anti-Catholic.’
‘But none of those responsible for these decisions has been the target of the vitriol that the Catholic League has been subjected to for merely asking Ron Howard to put a disclaimer in ‘The Da Vinci Code.’
“The play that never opened is ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie.’ It is based on the real-life story of a young American woman who was killed in 2003 when she threw herself in front of an Israeli bulldozer to protest the destruction of a Palestinian home. The man who made the decision to kill the play after he polled local Jews is Jim Nicola of the New York Theater Workshop. He is the same person who slammed his theater for withdrawing its support of ‘Corpus Christi,’ the play that depicted Jesus having sex with his disciples.
“The movie that might have offended Muslims is the Albert Brooks satire, ‘Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World.’ The ever-sensitive studio that dropped the movie because it objected to the film’s title is Sony, the same company that is releasing ‘The Da Vinci Code.’
“Get it? The artistic elite are careful not to offend Jews or Muslims, but they don’t give a hoot about offending Christians, especially Catholics. In other words, the cultural elite can be cowardly or combative—it just depends on who the target group is. And they wonder why so many Christians loathe them.”
