From an upcoming interview in Playboy magazine. Excerpts:
“Mel Gibson is in a town that’s run by Jews, and he said the wrong thing because he’s actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him – and doesn’t need to feed him anymore because he’s got enough dough,” Oldman said. “He’s like an outcast, a leper, you know?”
Oldman also defended Baldwin’s use of homophobic language: “Alec calling someone an F-A-G [sic] in the street while he’s pissed off coming out of his building because they won’t leave him alone. I don’t blame him. So they persecute.”
“Well, if I called Nancy Pelosi a c*** — and I’ll go one better, a f****** useless c*** — I can’t really say that. But Bill Maher and Jon Stewart can, and nobody’s going to stop them from working because of it. Bill Maher could call someone a fag and get away with it. He said to Seth MacFarlane this year, ‘I thought you were going to do the Oscars again. Instead they got a lesbian.’ He can say something like that. Is that more or less offensive than Alec Baldwin saying to someone in the street, ‘You fag’? I don’t get it.”
I’m torn. I LOVE Oldman as an actor. I think he’s damn near peerless in that field. And I understand the intent behind what he’s saying. He’s calling out what he sees as hypocrisy in Hollywood. And I think it can be commendable to expose hypocrites.
Not sure I can follow his logic all the way to the end of the trail, though.
It seems like a lot of bigoted people think that everyone thinks like them, and we’re just holding it in somehow. I guess it needs to be said every time, but: No, no. It really never does occur to most people to use ethnic and or sexual slurs. It’s just not a part of our vocabulary.
I do agree that someone calling someone a fag or faggot out of anger who is clearly or probably not gay is different from calling someone the same thing *because *of their sexual orientation. However, it’s still bad because he’s using homosexuality as in insult towards a presumably straight male. So I wouldn’t say, based on that that Baldwin was a straight out homophobe, but I think that kind of epithet furthers the idea that being a gay male means your less than a man. It was interesting watching self-proclaimed progressive hosts claim they never considered “cocksucker” to be a homophobic remark. I think there was hypocrisy on both sides.
I don’t understand the biting the hand that feeds him in regards to Mel Gibson. It’s not like Gibson made a comment claiming Jews have a lot of influence in Hollywood or even they have too much influence. He made a drunken rant about Jews starting all the wars that is something right out of white supremacist literature.
This. There’s a message in that meltdown that all of us, every one, use racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, or misogynistic language all the time, and that the hypocrisy is that we freak out when someone does it in public and gets caught.
Just because you’re drinking doesn’t mean it’s normal or even understandable to say stuff like “Jews started all the wars”. It’s not like “I love you man!”, or “It was college, everyone experiments!”
Actual quote from the interview by Oldman: “He got drunk and he said a few things. We’ve all said those things.”
I don’t consider myself a superduper politically correct person, but I can honestly say that I have NEVER said, or believed, that Jews started every war in history. I remember when it happened I think it was Kathy Griffin who questioned “How the fuck did that even come up when getting arrested for drunk driving?” Neither have I ever wished for my ex be gang raped by [let’s use the less incendiary term] black men.
Baldwin I have a bit more sympathy for, but while I doubt that he is a homophobe he does come across as a bullying asshole. Not just once or twice, but frequently.
I don’t think people’s problem with Gibson and Baldwin are that they have prejudices so much as they are fucking nuts.
And Bill Maher has been criticized many times, including by liberals, for many of his comments. And he had a show canceled because of his comments.
And very few people would call John Stewart an asshole.
I’m not sure that Oldman is quite as familiar with the stories as he thinks he is.
You have to wonder if there’s a connection between these two statements:
“Mel Gibson is in a town that’s run by Jews and he said the wrong thing because he’s actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him, and doesn’t need to feed him anymore because he’s got enough dough.”
“I hope you will know that this apology is heartfelt, genuine, and that I have an enormous personal affinity for the Jewish people in general, and those specifically in my life.”
If Oldman really does believe that Jews run the movie business, he may have had a belated realization that he does not have Gibson’s financial security.
I also notice Oldman apparently doesn’t feel he needs to apologize to gay people.
I can’t help but notice he feels the need to apologize to Jewish people who may have been offended but doesn’t feel the need to apologize to blacks, gays, or women.
Beyond that, I think it’s ridiculous to compare the Gibson and Baldwin cases.
Both were guilty of assholish things but Baldwin’s actions weren’t remotely as offensive as Gibson’s.
People like Mel Gibson, drunk off his ass, and Donald Sterling, senile and in private, are really not the same as supremacist statements and programs. Being people that are in the public eye, they should apologize, do penance and some time in social exile. What happened with Sterling and the NBA is that he damaged the entire organization. I think most people (me included) have internal moments of nasty things we don’t want to say out loud. In the past I have asserted that everyone has them, but many people claim not to, and what do I know about what is in people’s heads?
Prejudice is bad. Mmmm’kay? Don’t say it out loud and don’t act on it.
He ranted about wanting to be able to use racist, homophobic, and misogynistic slurs as well as expressed anti-Semitic conspiracy beliefs. Guess what? Those first three groups ALSO deserve apologies, you blithering jackwipe (Oldman, not anyone in this thread, in case I’m unclear).
I didn’t say it was reasonable. I said it was understandable. Gibson was raised by a Sedevacantist. Presumably he picked up some odd conspiracy-theory attitudes along the way.
in 2003, the USA went to war against Iraq for notoriousy spurious reasons. In both Iraq wars, the USA media (which is partly owned by and plays to a wealthy Jewish audience, as Oldman notes) spent a lot of time talking about how Israel was doing.
In the media bubble that is* USA! (a Jewish-owned corporation)[sup]TM[/sup], it sometimes feels like certain Zionist interests are running things for some particular interest of theirs, even when it’s really Anglo-Saxon imperialists and their Gulf State friends. Because on some level, the media like pretending that we are all about the poor deserving people of Israel. It takes a special kind of cynicism to realize that Hollywood is helping create an illusion* of a…let’s say a “Zionist Overlord Government” :p–but really the Jews aren’t actually running much of anything globally; they just want to feel like they’re in the halls of power internationally. I don’t think I’d fully processed that until just now. It’s kind of sad when you think about it.
And for Gibson, living particularly in Hollyweird itself, it’s actually pretty understandable that he would start thinking and saying these things aloud when drunk.