Well...

There he goes and writes the best article about cinema in my recent memory. Hats off to Armond White -- 2004, The Year the Culture Broke.

Suddenly, the 20th century’s great unifying art form — the movies — got reduced to a medium for generating polarized reactions, its artists and audiences divided by media agitation. With no place for evenly waged exchanges of ideas and aesthetics, national sensibilities could only fracture. No-longer-impartial media used their prominence to drive those who disagreed into quiet but resentful enclaves. This rupture was not along lines of taste but was instead derived from religious and political differences. It divided the moviegoing public along lines of alleged bigotry and professed grievance. In this light, charges that Gibson was anti-Jewish were impossible to challenge, but those aggrieved accusations destroyed any chance of achieving common ground. Trust was obliterated. No film has split the country so decisively since The Birth of a Nation in 1915. 

The Passion and Fahrenheit, as movies and as cultural events, are showcases of media corruption and dereliction of duty. Such obstruction of justice and abuse of power created a psychic stress that the culture couldn’t overcome.