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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Web Reconnaissance for 08/04/2006…
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention….
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.
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!
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.
Why is he asking the Jewish community for help for his alcoholism,he should be seeking divine intervention from this condition.