Posted by
Green Faerie on Wednesday, August 02, 2006 12:04:38 AM
Everybody's heard about Mel Gibson's freakout last weekend and everybody has an opinion. Here's mine.
I'd been a fan of his for several years, going back to the time I rented "Gallipoli" back in 1983. "Braveheart" remains one of my favorite films. I was glad "The Passion of the Christ" was successful because of all of the attempts to tear it down, largely by secularists and by some Jewish leaders worried it was going to start a wave of pogroms, which it didn't. Gibson also managed to pull off something that hadn't been done in a thousand years, and that was to bring Christians of every denomination together.
But I'm also aware Gibson has a dark side he's battled for a long time: chicks, booze, anger, arrogance, and a persecution complex. I think what happened with "The Passion" overwhelmed him. Of course I'm not excusing his behavior. I'm terribly disappointed with his behavior not because I expect him to be a saint, but because I expected better from a guy who at age 50 SHOULD know better. Who knows if he's a lifelong anti-Semite or not? In any case, he has apologized at least twice and I hope he will lay off the sauce and to purge the anti-Semitism from his heart. Medved feels betrayed and I don't blame him.
In any case, some wonder if Mel is washed up in Tinseltown. He has enough money to fund his own projects for the rest of his life and I think if he behaves, he will win back the respect of his fans. There are those who want Mel shunned, including a superagent who counts among his clients Israel-hating creep Michael Moore. Mel isn't the first celebrity to spout anti-Semitic comments either. What about Michael Jackson's line "jew me" from one of his songs from 15 years ago? Nobody minded that too much, except for the late film producer Dawn Steel. A stone-cold sober Vanessa Redgrave spouted her anti-Israel, pro-PLO blather at an Academy Awards acceptance speech back in the '70s (incidentally, some biographies mention her father was rabidly anti-Semitic). Marlon Brando once made some offensive comments while on Larry King's show several years ago (he must not have known much about King). Brando worked almost until the end of his weird life and while Redgrave never won an Oscar again, she's worked steadily over the years.
I find it sad that partially because we have a celebrity crazed culture and partially because the MSM has wanted to stick it to Mel for "The Passion"'s success, we heard more about this case than about another anti-Semite who killed one poor woman and injured four in Seattle. And we have people more outraged about a single boozed up actor's rant than about thousands of anti-Semites lobbing scores of missiles into a whole country filled with Jews.