Maybe I’m naive but I tend to think his contrition is sincere. His apologies don’t set off my bullshit detector. They don’t sound facile or self-serving to me.
My own pure speculation is that Mel was raised with ant-semitism being pounded into his head but thought that he had been able to rise above it. I’ve seen a couple of quotes from before this latest incident where he said that anti-semitism is contrary to his faith, that it’s a “sin.” I suspect that on an intellectual level he has tried to accept this, and maybe even believed that he had overcome the poison that was poured into his head when he was a child. Then, when he’s in a drunken rage, out it comes. I wonder if his statement about “Jews being the cause of all wars” was the kind of thing – perhaps even an exact line – that he heard a million times from his father growing up, and that when he had a load on it just popped right out of his mouth.
I’m just speculating here, but I think it’s possible that when he woke up the next morning he may have been genuinely shocked and dismayed that feelings he thought he had outgrown and rejected were still inside him somewhere. His public appeal to the Jewish community to help him figure out where those words had come from might reflect a genuine confusion on his part. It may be that sometimes bigotry can be so deeply instilled from an early age that it still lingers even after a person intellectually believes that he’s gotten over it.
I’m willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt a little bit, largely because he’s made no attempt to excuse himself or weasel out of any responsibility for any of his actions or his words. He’s stood up like a man, in my opinion, and said that his words were “despicable” and inexcusable. I don’t know that mere apologies can be enough for him to recover his public image but I don’t know what else he can do.
I also think it would be nice if he were to admit that some of his public statements about homosexuality have been just as despicable as what he said about Jews but I’m not going to hold my breath for that.
I agree completely with DtC. In fact, it’s almost as if we share the same mind.
It may be that we don’t say anything when we’re drunk that we don’t say when we’re sober, but we certainly say things when we’re angry that we don’t say when we’re content.
Mel is also reported to have told the officers repeatedly, “I own this town!” I don’t think he really believes that.
His apology was a good one: it was thorough, he took full responsibility, and he didn’t try to downplay his bad behavior. Also, he apologized before the public even knew the details of the arrest.
That’s a pretty tall order – maybe he should start small, like by declaring that Protestants (of which his wife is one) aren’t hellbound? Work his way up to Jews. As for queers, has he even repudiated any of his anti-gay comments? (I still wonder how he and Jodie Foster got along on Maverick.)
It’s been a long time since I had any respect for Mel Gibson’s judgement or character, so he’s kind of behind the 8-ball with me on this latest. I thought that his doing the Russian roulette scene in the first Lethal Weapon showed courage – it takes a lot of guts for a Roman Catholic to essentially question what it would take to make a man take his own life.
But his religious awakening (in response, IIRC, to drinking and depression problems) seem to have combined with his success and gone to his head. Movie stars can be assholes, and Mel is proof that religion is no protection against it.
Maybe someday, when nine-figure sums aren’t riding on it, Mel could pull a George Wallace job that I’d believe. (I pretty much accept Wallace’s claims to have changed. But Wallace had a valid claim that his words and actions were part of his job, since anyone running for office in his place and time had to support segregation).
Wow. That’s pretty much how I feel. I don’t know how he will be able to change his deeply felt religious convictions just because he’s been officially dubbed an Asshole of the Highest Order. I believe that he is guided by his ghastly religion first and his wealth and fame second.
Maybe poster meant that, but I took it to mean the crazy schism his father belongs to. Mel disavows, but he did, I believe, build 'em a church right on his property, and they do, I’m certain, think Jews are responsible for all the wars in this world, for one thing. His claims of being a rosegarden-variety Catholic have been sort of blasted out of the water by this incident.
Nah. His first apology was purely to the police for being rude to them (ie trying not to get charged). Only after it was pointed out that he entirely failed to even mention the anti-Semetic stuff first time round (ie when he realised his precious career was on the line) did he suddenly go the grovel.
Not that this cite is the end-all authority, but it appears that he does, or at least did, belong to this group and embraced the same anti-semetic ideas they do.
I agree with Diogenes the Cynic, as posted above. Well put.
I am not so sure about the validity of the “in vino veritas” idea. As stated, no doubt Mel has had anti-Semitism pounded into his head for years. The booze then removed the censor that later experience imposed. In other words, the anti-Semitic thoughts were really part of him, but so was the mental repudiation that stopped Mel from expressing or acting on those thoughts.
He doesn’t fucking have to. That is my Goddamned opinion. Boo fucking hoo if you or some other poster(s) don’t like it. They are fucking relevant opinions.
We can play this game all day, dude. Well, it’s my goddamned opinion that your post was irrelevant to the question posed in the OP and boo hoo if you don’t like that. My opinion on Woody Allen’s latest movie and the best BBQ restaurant in Tulsa are relevant too but not to the OP. C’mon, buddy, get a clue.
Let’s say his father had hated blacks instead, and had brought little Melly up as a racist. Mel eventually grows out of it, but then he’s drunk driving one night and a black cop pulls him over. He lets fly with a string of epithets and stereotypes, but wakes up the next morning thinking, “What the fuck?” That I could see, and perhaps eventually excuse. But there would have been something to trigger his alcohol-hampered brain in that case.
Where was the Jewish thing in this traffic stop that brought on this tirade? Nothing as far as I can tell, unless he’s so paranoid on the subject that it only takes a six-pointed sherriff’s badge to get him freaked out. I suspect rather that these torrents of hatred are constantly a-boil in his brain, and it takes him such monumental effort to keep his mouth appropriately shut that even moderate intoxication is enough to open the flood-gates.
Disney didn’t cancel Apocalypto, it cancelled a mini-series about the holocaust that Gibson was working on. Disney is apparently contractually obliged to distribute Apocalypto and still intends to do so.
The 650 pink slips were issued last week for reasons unrelated to the Gibson incident.