I’m assuming you’ve already heard all about Da Vinci Code II? Only this time it isn’t Dan Brown, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and Sony Pictures that are responsible for the predictable just-in-time-for-Easter-Jesus-isn’t-really-divine tale that comes every year at the beginning of Spring Training. The networks always run the specials and the tabloids always put it on the covers. It’s the requisite hit piece on Christianity that we’ve all grown accustomed to. No, this year, the respon-sibility has fallen to James Cameron of Titanic fame with his The Lost Tomb of Jesus.
Poor James Cameron. He wanted some of that Da Vinci Code action so badly that he jumped on a 27 year old story line that everyone else in Hollywood had wisely passed on. He ignored so many early warning signs, too. When he was hav-ing trouble early on finding A, B, or even C list “scientific experts” who were willing to throw their careers away if they would only validate his silly theories – and they all continued saying no – he didn’t let that slow him down one bit. He pressed on and signed the minor league guys. And later, when the best he could come up with for his advance publicity hook was to claim statistically similar names and unrelated DNA samples – He still didn’t pull the plug – even though any-one who has ever seen just one episode of CSI is sharp enough to spit out the bait. More astute critics simply repeated what the original archeologist on the scene had pointed out: that a poor family from Bethlehem could never afford a mid-dle-class tomb in which to place the ossuaries in Jerusalem, especially during a famine, and that the names on the boxes were far too common to jump to any conclusions about having found The Jesus Family Tomb.
Well, where fools rush in…
So Cameron has lost all credibility, you don’t respect him, and you think it’s somewhat sad, right? Don’t be. He and the Discovery Channel are laughing all the way to the bank. This was never about “discovering” anything, it was about “sell-ing” something.
He doesn’t care what you think, and apparently neither does the Discovery Channel.
Shame on you if you ever trust the Discovery Channel to teach your kids anything ever again...
Read the rest of Frank Pastore's fine column (and, trust me, there's some more really great stuff to read there) right here.
