If the written word were still expressed on paper, I think I’d be mourning the fallen trees wasted to provide the reams of paper needed for the feeding frenzy documenting the Fall of Mel Gibson.
As it is, with the seemingly endless coverage of this story, I suppose I should be grieving the wasted bandwidth, gigabytes, and whatever magic enables images and speech to leave one place and bounce off a satellite and end up on television sets around the world.
I admit, Mel Gibson has usually been an actor I liked. Plus, he was really a hunk in his younger days (still is when he’s not in a drunken stupor). Even his mug shot was no where near as horrible as some others we’ve been treated to lately.
When I first heard about his anti-Semitic tirade and crude remarks to the female officer at the scene of his most recent foray into drunken idiocy, I thought surely they were being misconstrued by the ever vigilant MSM. It wasn’t really for any particular love of Mel Gibson that I had a hard time believing it, I don’t know the man. It was because I actually find it hard to believe that in this day and age there are people who think like that.
Then I read the report. And as my Beloved Curmudgeon reminded me, ‘In wine, truth’. I already knew that alcohol has a way of taking away that little filter in our brains that keeps us from exposing our inner most thoughts to the world, as a general rule.
However anyone wants to spin it, Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite. He apparently is a horn-dawg. And he’s certainly an alcoholic.
It is what it is.
He gave what seemed to me a sincere apology. I have rarely heard an alcoholic take responsibility for his/her words or actions. I have rarely heard an alcoholic refer to their actions as ‘despicable’ and make no attempt to assign blame on something or someone other than themselves. He took full responsibility, called himself an alcoholic, and asked the Jewish community for help with his ’sickness’.
I know some people aren’t cutting him any slack on account of his apology. I’ve heard people say he only apologized for his words, not for the fact that he has those feelings to begin with. But I still saw his apology as much more meaningful than most I’ve heard, and I’ve heard a lot of them.
I have wondered why Mel Gibson has been endlessly in the news and all over the internet for this incident when others who have made similar irrational statements and displayed similar reckless behavior and addictions have fleeted across the television screens and then dropped from view.
Hillary Clinton’s statement that her husband’s former campaign director was a ‘f*cking Jew bastard’ comes to mind. Her support of palestine and her little kissie-face with the wife of Yasser Arafat also come to mind. But she’s apparently been forgiven those things, even though she’s never apologized, just participated in spin control and denial.
The only difference I can come up with is that Gibson was briefly the darling of the conservative right. That’s a definite no-no for the news media and would certainly set him up for a feeding frenzy whenever he fell from his pedestal. And he has most assuredly fallen from that pedestal.
Hillary, Rangel, Sharpton and even Farrakhan are given a pass. Even the blogger who attacked Joe Lieberman by photoshopping him in black-face has not made any news other than on conservative blogs.
None of that really matters except in terms of how the MSM tries to shape public opinion. Who is Mel Gibson? I actually have no idea, but I’m sure he’s a lot of things. A very poor image of him emerged in this latest episode. It’s unfortunate. For him.
The real question is why America cares so much about it. He is a man who needs help for a very serious disease, alcoholism. He is a man who needs help for a very serious sickness, anti-Semitism.
Perhaps we should find our heroes in other places. We are repeatedly disappointed in the ones we anoint as heroes from hollywood or the sports world.
Mel Gibson is not a hero, he just plays one in movies. He is flawed, as we all are.
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August 4th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Web Reconnaissance for 08/04/2006…
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention….
August 4th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Although I agree he is a flawed individual (as we all are to an extent,) I hardly think this is a career-ending mistake. We will see.
August 4th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Excellent post Beth…I do not believe that he meant his alleged apology but as u so eloquently say…Who cares and why!..:) thanks for the link!
August 4th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
I agree that we’re all human.
To me, it sounds more like a comment some drunk would say in a blackout; I think you get a better “feel” for a person when they’re sober than drunk.
Should Mel have said that? Nope. More likely, he probably shouldn’t have been drinking. That will change, apparently.
August 6th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Why is he asking the Jewish community for help for his alcoholism,he should be seeking divine intervention from this condition.
April 18th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Scuse me but what osmeone say whe drunk is nto the truth.
If oyu drink a little it migth remove some barriere and do that oyu comunicatemore easily to others, but if oyu dring alot and are analcoholic thent oyu are far behond that, youa re there where oyu got no idea of what oyu are saying nor tlaking about.
And btw, there was a war att hat tiem between israel and Hamas, an dtheisraelian army had invaded Libanon, and thousand of refugies where leavign the coutnry by boats everyday and the TV news were full of it and bloody pictures of fighting and also exactly that week of small childrens beign killed, and Iran was talkign of bombing israel and israel of bombing the whole world if they were to be bombed so othey wil take it all with them..
So Mel might have been mad at the war, bu ti doubt very much he ment somehting drasticaly antisemite by saying the jew statrted that war! i am sure theofficer wrote it down as being the jews are the cause of all wars many hours late or even dayslater. Cuase there was the official statement and then the guy was offered some money by the pres and delivered th esecodn statmeent
and dude, scuse me, but thats not cause thats ona police rapport and on the internet that its true if oyu see what I mean..
Do oyu have a tape of Mel Gibson sayign that?
NO
all we have is that rapport by this officer who received money to fdeliver the marchandise to.. paparazi who hated Mel Gibson who ahd hated them back since soooo long! and who had jsut finished a movie called Paparazzi and who was agaisnt them and soem odf htem in particular and so in no doubtful ways. Sop they were bitter!
and guess why oyu were never told that? cause thats thsoe same paparazi who made the news!
As all alcoholic he got no idea of what he said when he was drunk so he just apologised, cause he ahd no way to confirm or infirm the truth of those accusation, he was like “not there” when it hapened.
And thats the problem here.
Cause i read several times from people working in police stations, that IT HAS NEVER HAPPEEND IN AMERICAN POLICE HISTORY THAT THE TALK AN DBS FORMA DRUNKARD ARRESTED IN THE STREET OR IN DUI, WERE WRITTEN DOWN ON PAPER ONCE INSIDE THE STATION. THE USUAL IS TO WRITE DOWN IF THE GUY RESISTED AREST AND IF HE HITTED THE POLICEMAN OR NOT, AND THATS IT, TOGETHER WITH THE ALCOHOL % AND CASE CLOSED.
THEY CAN WRITE DOWN BEHAVIOR OF THE PEROSN INSIDE THE POLICE STATION AND IF THE GUY BEGIN TO INSULT PEOPLE ONCE INSIDE BUT THAT STOP THERE.
IT WAS A SET UP OF MEL GIBSON PLANED AFTER HIS ARREST.
mel gibsons best friends are jewish so htats how wrong you can be and so many others too.
Like hillary clinton, she is jew and so is her husband dude! i am so estonished that oyu dnt even know that! you werent invited to her daughters bar mitzva?
And since when is being friendly with palestinain synonym wiht antisemitisme? thats the moste racistic and prejudicefull assertion i have heard in a long time!
waht irritates me is that even 3 years later peple hang on it even he was drunk.
and even there si no real prove that he ever said that exactly.
A drubnk saying “the jew are cause of all war” while there was war in lebanon and irak, is it realy racistic or antisemitic?
How?
There is no discrimination at all in that assertion but an opinion. from someone unclear in the head at the time of the statemnt, to say it nicely. The french are the cause of all war! am i then xenophobiac?
you can say its not true as a statement, but its not antisemitic.
All th epeople who pretneded so and stil does, have forgotten or even never knew waht it is he actualy said. All they do is copy paste th esame pro forma standard words “anti semitic tirade” waht ever that means!
“teh jews are cause of all war” is a sentence, not a tirade, and is not ansimetic. Its soem BS to say that cause its not true and cannot be true, and its not even sure he actualy say that, but it doesnt reflect hatress towards jews. He made a dumb meaningless statement.
Which aint that estonishing coming form someone drunk.
So wahts left?
nothing
a sea of dumber journalists or so cal journalists who copied pasted each others statmeent wihtout once verificatig the source nor making research of any kind, and put instead all their effort in demolishing someone hwo had doen them nothing! but beign a too god exple of human goodness and credulity and naivity too.
who knows, maybe the guy was sexualy abused when little, thats why he walk like agay and is dead scared of them and dont like them.
maybe he got psised off and scared by all the rabin and rigth wing extremists jew totaly radicalised, whos ended him tons of death threats while he was makig the passion of christ and befro it was in the movie hteaters, and all the dead threats that weresend to his kids too, so htat he had ( for the first timein his career) to ahve bodyguards aroudn him and his kids at all time.
BTW guess who that bodyguard is?
HE IS JEW! YEAH! AND HE STILL WORK FOR MEL GIBSON! AND MEL GIBSONM HAD HIM RECRUITED DIRECTLY FORM ISRAEL AND TOOK A GUY WHO WAS FORMED I TEH ISRAELIAN SECRET SERVICE!
THERE!
MEL GIBSON WAS HELPED BY THE ISRAELIAN SECRET SERVICEOT RECRUTE A BODYGUARD FORM THEIR RANG!
DANG!
AND YOU STILL THINK THAT HE IS ANTISEMITE?
WHY SHOULD AN ANTISEMITE DO THAT DUDE?
Anyway, the guy looks 15 year solder than he is not cause of the booze but cause of teh paparazi and the bad press who stressed him to death specialy the threats agiasnt his kids. That scared him to death.
and he didn tunderstood how a movie he made wiht all his soul and heart, in th ename of love and Jesus Christ was to awake so much hatress form the vatican and form the jews.
he didnt get it. I dont either
when the guy that made the godfather amde amovie abotu hjesus call the last temtation of christ, he amde jesus say a load of shit about the jews and agaisnt them who are not in the bible, but htat he made up himself, like most of his movie, very free lance style.. it was at the end of the 70′es. But he didnt get any trouble wiht that. at all!
he got in trouble with the press cause his movie wasnt good enough and introble too for being too free lance an dnot enough by the book but else, nobody noticed it.
Guess waht
the guy is jew! LOLOLOLOL
so if oyu are jew its alright to insult all the jews s a whole nation and say shit about htem even it got nothign ot do with the story but oyuputit oyurslef, but 30 eyars later a guy come, not jew,a nd thistime make the same but by the book with newst historical material and all, and he is call antisemite and got hell after him, why? casue he put in his movie a 10 minutes tirade who was in thebible before? before it was removed i mean. ehem, it was removed by th evatican , to wash their hands for their atrocity during WW” and middleage harrasement and kilign of jews, so they removed it who had been used as a reason to say that the jews killed jesus ad a reason to hate them.
even if the arabs dot give a flying fc about Jesus but od hate the jews as nobody ever hated them before!
He never wasantisemite but i guess that soem jews wanted him to be and tried all they could to force him to hate jews.
If jews extremists were sneding oyu death threats on oyu and oyur kids wiht the name of their school and all, how would oyu feel about that community afterwards?
Just asking.
but hte guy aint that dumb and he know thats not cause some fruiotsare rotten that the tree is.
What surpirse me in the story is why not more people racted liek hjournalists to tak his defense and ask what the hell was going on with people?
Why this hysteria agiasnt him?
he spend too much money helping ppoors form all countriesatroufn th owrld and helping the environement?
And how many of those jewish journalists know that mel gibson fians project ot help feed children in israel?
yeah oyu hear me rigth!
big family in israel got tha tproblem that they cant feed their kids who go to bed on empty stomach at lest 3 times a week.
He fianced the projects who buy food for those families.
how many of those jewish journalists do so?
I bet zero!
Time ofr someen to write an article a big one, in the Time magasine and reaveal things as they are and not as they are used to be standardised and copy paste ad libitum!
and ad eternam.
If i was him i htink i will be fuckign paranoide!