For the people saying she’s a gold digger, you might want to take a look at her Wiki. She was actually married to Timothy Dalton and she does have a career…or did. Mel signed her to his record label so, technically (and sadly), I guess he really does own her.
I don’t get why people keep saying that she or her attorney MUST have leaked the tapes. Like the police never leak anything? Some evidence clerk can’t burn a CD? Mel’s attorney’s receptionist (who secretly hates Mel because everytime he comes into the office he calls her Sugartits and asks her when she’s going to blow him) can’t burn one?
There are plenty of people with access to these recordings. To think differently is just stupid.
Well, she’s not that young. I think she’s 40ish.
The feeling I get with a lot (read: not all) of people who throw around gold-digger accusations is that they think the woman should just shut up and be GRATEFUL that a rich man would want to be with them for as long as they feel like.
So funny, really. She’s a gold-digger! Oh that poor Mel, she obviously FORCED herself on him and he had no choice but to let her BLOW HIM. Why oh why did nobody warn him of this gold-digger?
Priceless.
Man, those tapes are really starting to get to me. I think I won’t listen to any more. The first few were hilarious. The last one (4th one?) was just grating and disturbing. He really made me feel uncomfortable.
So! “Blow me, I deserve it” is a pretty catchy catch phrase, right?
Exactly. I don’t think she’s a saint. She did get involved with a married man, but Timothy Dalton isn’t running to the press with stories of being taken advantage of, and no one who knows her is either. I mean, come on, we’re damning a 40 year old woman (with her own career, and a patented method of teaching music to children) based on two relationships she’s had in her entire life-span. And the only thing we know about her early relationship is that they had a son and broke up. End of story.
All victims of DV aren’t perfect. They’re humans just like us, who make mistakes. But those mistakes should not get dragged up and exploited if it has nothing to do with the abuse (and it never does) because it could have a chilling effect on the regular everyday woman who’s observing these events and needs desperately to get out of her own situation.
Some people in this thread are playing perfectly into Mel’s breakdown of this woman, and it will have a chilling effect on DV survivors in general. I’m so fired up about this because I believe the reaction will take awareness of the mechanics of abuse three steps back. And a poster above was right, there is something just as bad or worse probably happening to some women, men, and children less than a mile from you right now. THAT’S why I believe it’s so important for me to shout support for this woman from the rooftops until it sinks into people that this. is. not. ok.
You want abused women to leave? She’s leaving. She’s a golddigger because she’s leaving and collecting evidence to protect her children and she would be an idiot if she stayed. :rolleyes:
No kidding. And what’s particularly odd about this gold digger accusation is that she repeatedly says on the tapes that she doesn’t care if he never gives her another dime, she’s trying to protect her life and the life of her daughter. I suppose it could all be show since she’s being recorded, but c’mon.
I expect Mel Gibson is an unpleasant man IRL. On the other hand, given that all I supposedly know about him, or any of you think you know either, is a what you’ve heard in the mass media; I’d review the Fatty Arbuckle case before I get all carried away with my “How bad is Mel?” rhetoric. If there is one thing the press loves more than destroying a politician, it is destroying a performer. This story is a big payday for lots of people, so they have every reason to paint it in the most lurid possible way.
Alcoholism is a funny thing, especially for high functioning alcoholics. It seems like they will never have to pay the piper, they still work, have a wife, family, life, they still function.
And then, one day, the train arrives at the station.
Not just accumulated liver damage and chirossis. One day they just go from being somewhat reasonable and ‘passing’ to being out of their freaking minds. Everyone around them is all, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming, he’s always been so reasonable, y’know for an alcoholic.”
You pickle yourself in booze for 25+ yrs and there is going to be some tell tale signs. They may take a while to surface, but they’re coming for you. Your liver, your brain, one day just say enough! Those winos you see, blathering away to themselves, in the street, were once high functioning too. Then, one day, they weren’t. They were all bent and twisted, their brains don’t work, and they are addicted to booze so badly they can’t stop, so they just keep going. Straight downhill.
Take a hard look at the high functioning alcoholics in your life, and accept right now, it is their future.
Boo on all that doomsday stuff, elbows. I know plenty of people that drank their whole lives and ended up jolly old men (Hi, grandad.)
The mass media isn’t ranting and raving like a lunatic on those tapes. The mass media didn’t punch that woman in the mouth and knock out her teeth. I think Mel is doing a pretty fucking good job painting himself luridly all on his own.
I understand that you’re not saying she deserved the abuse, but what you are doing is tacitly accepting and reinforcing his fantasy that she was responsible for the outbursts. The justification abusers use, and what I’m seeing all over the internet in regard to this situation, is that she pushed him to the abuse by being such a golddigging whore.
Maybe she fell in love with him the same way many victims fall for their abusers. He’s a charming guy who probably painted a “I had a hard time and everyone misunderstood me” boo hoo story. In the flush of new love and attraction, you buy it.
I don’t know that that’s what happened anymore than you know she’s a golddigger. What I’m saying is that her being a golddigger or not is totally irrelevant to the abuse. It does not matter. It doesn’t matter to the point that it should probably not even be brought up. What happens to high profile sufferers will influence how your next door neighbor will react when it happens to her, so we should watch what we say.
*Hahaha "there’s Jews in my shampoo bottle hahaa
Yeah. She may not be the most ingenuous, loving, self-effacing person on the planet. She may even have gone into the relationship with a level-headed assessment of her potential gain. I’m guessing his motivations in getting involved with her were no less calculating and no more ingenuous, loving, and self-effacing. If two people essentially come to an agreement that their relationship isn’t necessarily twue wuv, but more a long term prostitution contract, WTF difference does it make? She can still be an innocent victim - lack of innocence in one sphere doesn’t revoke your ability to be a legitimate victim.
As for the assertion that “she’s a gold digger!” is merely a coincidental statement of fact, not meant to excuse him in any way, here’s my problem:
Person A: “Oh man, Mel Gibson is fucked up, listen to this tape - he spouts racism, misogyny, and general violence, and admits to punching her while she was holding their baby! What a waste of oxygen!”
Person B: “Gee, that is messed up. But you know, she’s a gold digger.”
The juxtaposition of the statement with a conversation about the whackalooniness and loathesomeness of the abuser has an unmistakable subtext.
I said he’s an unpleasant man. Anything above and beyond that, like the gloating psychologizing (to differentiate it from legitimate psychology) with which this thread is freighted is no more than speculation, no matter who does it.
The joking, pointing and laughing, etc. rather give the lie to any claim that my fellow dopers have any concern for Oksana. This is all about enjoying the public destruction, or even self-destruction, of an unpopular celebrity. In the end, I don’t have any real problem with it as Mel Gibson is only a face on a screen to me. It’d be a little more seemly, though, if you all dropped the token expressions of sympathy for her and just got down to gloating and wallowing in Gibson’s implosion.
I
- Really, really, truly, feel sorry for Oksana.
- Really think some of the shit he’s saying on the tapes is funny.
The two don’t cancel each other out. Of course I’m enjoying that he’s a figure of derision now. That’s what I think abusers should be.
Yes. The one funny thing in the movie *Little Nicky *was the image of Hitler having a pineapple shoved up his ass every day. It’s only funny *because *he was so irredeemably horrible.
I for one am not going to listen to the tapes, because I know they’ll just make me feel sad and horrified. But I’m quite happy to read jokes at Mel’s expense from those with tougher constitutions.
Re Oksana GrigorievaI would lost a bar bet about her age. She’s 40 years old, so this image of her as an doe eyed baby machine with her hand out is at odds with her wiki info. She is a model and a music teacher and was self supporting.
The only thing that would make you think she’s got her eye on playing the long game vs being so in love with Mel is that Gibson is notoriously crude, and emotionally unstable. For a self supporting woman with choices, in her mid to late thirties to be willing to put up with that kind of BS and (apparently) a man who expects scheduled blow jobs there has to be something more on her mind over the long term than being his cum dumpster.
This doesn’t make her a “gold digger”, but I don’t think she was entirely oblivious to his dark side before deciding to ride the Mel roller coaster. People make risk calculations in any relationship, and she was willing to roll the dice with a superstar kook on the bet she could attain her on objectives along the way. When you play with crazy people that’s rarely a good bet.
As for those who don’t think she released these tapes herownself … please.
“A person who enters a relationship with another person based in large part if not primarily upon the possibility of personal gain” would seem a reasonable definition.
Examples would include a woman who enters into a sexual relationship with a phenomenally wealthy man who is a significantly older substance abusing chain smoking nutcase with a reputation for lunacy so entrenched in the popular psyche that it’s the subject of a South Park episode made before he ever met her and who is a rabid religious nut who made a snuff film about Jesus but who signs her to his record label and provides incredibly generously for her and the illegitimate child she conceives with him while he’s still married to the mother of his first seven children. Or Anna Nicole Smith.
I’m not enjoying this. I’m also not Psychologizing" anything. He admits on tape to having punched her in the face, and mocks her on tape for being upset about. He threatens to rape and murder her on tape. He threatens to burn her house down on tape. The media isn’t doing it to him. These aren’t just accusations, they are facts in evidence.
I also don’t need anybody telling me how I feel about the victim. Some of the public responses to the victim are more infuriating to me than Mel’s behavior itself. I still don’t really feel any hatred of Gibson. He’s just crazy. The smears against the victim are what really piss me off. That’s exactly why a lot of DV victims don’t try to get help.
Mel Gibson the actor was so popular with female movie goers because he was handsome and charming. He built his whole career on being super hot and lovable. Even in Lethal Weapon, where the focus wasn’t on a romance or personal loss, he’s appealing because he’s smart and funny and a bit dangerous and clearly full of pain–a very appealing combination. Now, I’m not saying Mel Gibson is one of the acting greats, but he certainly has some skills. Is it such a stretch then that he might have actually won her over? Charmed her? Seduced her? Swept her off her street? Fooled her? He’s clearly not a slobbering maniac in public often. He’s had one very public drunken meltdown a handful of years ago. If he behaved like this on a regular basis, then these recordings wouldn’t be so surprising (and surprisingly controversial).
He might have been able to pull the wool over her eyes long enough to get her into a relationship and then continued treating her like abusers treat their victims–belittled her, intimidated her, beat her, isolated her from her friends, and generally reduced her humanity until she was reliant on him and terrified for her life.
Everybody who joins a relationship does so because they expect some kind of personal gain. Do you have some evidence that she deceived or grifted him somehow?
Why do you think HE entered the relationship? What was he expecting? Do you believe he was truly in love and got his heart broken? In what way was he victimized, and in what way is a completely evidence-free, yet also completely unfalsifiable accusation that she is a “gold digger” relevant to the conversation?
Do you believe there are any DV victims who are perfect, sinless, flawless human beings?