The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Bottom Stories of the Day

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  • “Metro Nashville Schools Fail to Make Gains”–headline, Tennessean, Nov. 4
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Godzilla vs. Muhammad
Roland Emmerich has a new disaster movie coming out titled “2012.” No, it’s not about President Obama’s re-election campaign, although the film does depict the destruction of the White House, along with other landmarks, including the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. But there’s one notable omission from the list, SciFiWire.com reports:

Emmerich was thinking of something even more explosive: the Kaaba, the cube-shaped building at the heart of Mecca, the focus of prayers and the Islamic pilgrimage called the Hajj; it is one of Islam’s holiest sites.

Really?

“Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit,” Emmerich says. “But my co-writer Harald said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. . . . We have to all . . . in the Western world . . . think about this. You can actually . . . let . . . Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have . . . a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it’s just something which I kind of didn’t [think] was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out.”

Presumably he means a Muslim symbol, not an “Arab” one. In any case, this prompted an outraged response from the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue:

When we got word recently that the movie “2012” depicts the Vatican being blown up, along with the famous statue from Rio, Christ the Redeemer, we were unmoved. Why? Because this occurs during the end of the world in a massive destruction. This kind of sensationalism, we reasoned, is standard fare for director Roland Emmerich: he is the guru of the “blow ’em up” genre of movies. But now we’ve learned that while Catholics get theirs, Muslims are spared. Out of fear, of course.

Emmerich is more than a coward–he is a liar who has it out for Catholics. Last year, he was quoted saying, “I would like to erase all nations and religions.” Not true. He is quite content to live with Islam, even though he readily admits it is a religion of terror. . . .

So why was the Sistine Chapel designated for destruction? “We have to show how this gets destroyed. . . . I am against organized religion.” Emmerich lies again. He is not against Islam.

After bragging that the movie shows the Sistine Chapel falling on people’s heads, Emmerich explains the moral of the story: “Never pray in front of a big church. Pray by yourself.” He lies again: Muslims who want to pray in front of a mosque are safe. That’s because, as Emmerich sees it, they’re known to kill those who offend their religion.

Every time I say Hollywood hates Christianity, especially Catholicism, my critics cringe. But they never offer evidence that I’m wrong.

We like Bill Donohue, but this makes no sense whatsoever. He begins by saying that he has no objection in principle to a disaster movie’s depicting the destruction of Catholic holy sites. But he concludes that Emmerich “has it out for Catholics” and “hates Christianity” because he doesn’t give Muslim sites the same treatment.

But Emmerich makes it quite clear that this was not because of any particular antipathy toward Christianity or amity toward Islam but because of fear that fake violence against Mecca would be met with real violence against him. Such threats are a serious problem, but the fear they instill should not be mistaken for genuine respect. Two cheers for Catholicism for responding to critics and even bigots in a civilized way. If Donohue stops [playing] the victim, we’ll make it three cheers.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.