Mel's night out

[fontman]

Mel's night out
By Cal Thomas
Thursday, August 3, 2006

In the commentary and posturing I've read about Mel Gibson's drunken slur against the Jewish people and his incredible hubris about his power and position while driving under the influence of stardom, some things have been left out.

Maybe I'll sound like an old fogy or some reincarnated Puritan by asking this, but what was a married man with seven children doing in a bar until 2 a.m. with young women hanging all over him? Why do people who get caught doing something wrong - we used to have standards for determining such things - always blame alcohol, or abuse as a child, or temporary insanity, or a mental lapse that is not indicative of "who I really am," or a force beyond them ("the devil made me do it") to absolve themselves of personal moral guilt? Commentators seem to care more about the offense to Jews than Gibson's offense to his wife and children and to the idea of what it means to be married ("forsaking all others").

Gibson's latest rant was not an aberration influenced by booze. Other statements he's made about other groups and individuals, while presumably sober, indicate a pattern. Two years ago, Frank Rich wrote a column in The New York Times about Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" movie. In it, Rich suggested the film could encourage anti-Semitism. Gibson told The New Yorker magazine, "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog."

In a 1995 Playboy interview, Gibson said of a British author who published an unauthorized Gibson biography, "I don't think God will put him in my path. He deserves death."

No honest person can say he, or she, has never felt bigotry against a person or group of people based on race, gender, sexual practices, language, ethnicity or faith. Most of us control it and acknowledge it as a flaw we all share. But most of us, it is hoped, don't harbor such feelings for long, or let them fester to the point where they become a moral infection that colors our views of an entire group. Gibson must do more than spend time with Jews, or contribute money to Jewish causes to find absolution.

Also absent from the discussion about Gibson is his membership in a profession that has a long history of bigotry against certain faiths, political persuasions and individuals who go against the political tide of most in the Hollywood film community. Jewish writers like Michael Medved and Donald Feder have chronicled numerous instances of anti-Christian bias and bigotry in Hollywood. "The Da Vinci Code," "Saved" and "Priest" are only three contemporary examples.

Here's a synopsis of "Priest" from movietome.com: "Father Greg is a Catholic priest who works at a parish in Liverpool. Like Father Matthew, Father Greg is not dealing well with his vow of celibacy. Father Greg is a homosexual and he keeps this secret on his own. One night he slips out to a gay bar where he meets Graham. The following day, 14-year-old Lisa Unsworth reveals to him that her father is sexually abusing her. Because of the sanctity of the confessional, Father Greg cannot tell anyone about the abuse. Mrs. Unsworth catches her husband with her daughter and blames Father Greg for not stopping them." It all winds up before the congregation where "angry and homophobic parishioners confront Father Greg." Notice in Hollywood's moral universe, it isn't the priest's homosexual practices and failure to help the sexually-abused child that is wrong. It's the "homophobic" congregation that is stained with "intolerance," the only "sin" Hollywood recognizes.

This is not to excuse or dilute Gibson's offense. It is, rather, to place it in the context of a bigger problem for Hollywood. With a few notable exceptions - gratefully acknowledged - liberal filmmakers believe they can get away with bigotry against religious and political beliefs they oppose. They would never make a film called "Imam" about a hypocritical mullah because that might result in a violent response. But it is always open season on Catholics and conservative Protestants, political conservatives, Republicans and pro-lifers.

With such films, Hollywood shows itself to have a bigotry problem, which, like Mel Gibson, cannot be blamed on booze.

[thedrifter]

Mad Mel
August 2nd, 2006

Most guys who made a personal profit well into the hundreds of millions of dollars on their last film might feel pretty happy. If the film triumphed over a generally hostile press and the opposition of industry big-shots, the pot of gold would seem all the sweeter, one would think.

And if you happen to blessed with good looks, apparent good (physical, if not mental) health and the adulation of millions, you might walk around with an attitude of gratitude, particularly if you were given to proclaiming in public the depth of your religious convictions as a follower of Jesus Christ.

But not Mel Gibson. He seems to have been one angry dude late last week, partying in a Malibu bar and getting his picture taken with the sort of ladies who hang out at Malibu bars. That’s rarely a wise move for a married man with lots of kids at home, someone who would have no perceptible reason to question his attractiveness to the opposite sex.

So what’s with Mel?

Maybe his care-givers and fellow inhabitants of the rehab program he has announced he is entering will find out. On the other hand, maybe even Mel himself will never figure out the dark currents of his troubled soul, much less be able to verbalize them to others.

I can still look upon his masterwork, The Passion of the Christ, with the same eyes, but my feelings about the man have changed. I abhor the repulsive things he is reported to have said and I can’t bring myself to like him. Maybe never again. He now falls into the same category as Richard Wagner, a man who composed some glorious music that still can stir my soul, but whose personal beliefs were repellant, and some of whose notable fans are among the most evil people ever to walk the surface of the earth.

But Mel, unlike Wagner, is still breathing, and has a chance to find redemption, spiritually, and maybe even professionally. Tim McNabb today presents the Christian perspective of the Holy Spirit

waiting to teach, correct and then comfort and restore the penitent believer, no matter what their sin.

Such spiritual matters are beyond my depth. But when it comes to the crass realities of politics, business, and their Hollywood nexus, I am back in my element.

I am glad that Abe Foxman of the anti-Defamation League has accepted Gibson’s second-draft version of an apology, and that a rabbi has invited Mel to address his congregation on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

All of us who have sinned (and to me that means all of us) ought to welcome sincere efforts on the part of those who have sinned against us (and Mel has sinned against Jew, Christian, and non-believer alike) to reform and make amends. Like all of us, Mel will meet his Maker, and the final judgment is out of our hands.

But I do wish Ari Emmanuel, powerful Hollywood agent and brother of Democrat powerhouse mover and shaker Rahm Emmanuel would not

Urge[d] those in Hollywood to stop working with Gibson, “even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line.”

The fate of Mel’s soul aside, does it really make sense for Hollywood’s most powerful Jews to do their best to prove to anti-Semites everywhere that Jews really do run Hollywood and can dictate who can make movies and what they can say? David Duke must have been delighted when Ari Emmanuel issued his ukase.

There has been a lot of triumphalism on the part of those who indicted (falsely, in my view) The Passion of the Christ as an anti-Semitic work. I have yet to hear of a single pogrom occurring as viewers left a showing of the film. And in the wake of viewing of the film, I have had a number of rewarding discussions with deeply religious Christian friends about the Gospels and the role of Jews in them. Most of them reported a deepening of their sympathetic understanding of Jews in the Gospels.

In centuries past, the Gospels and Passion Plays have indeed served as a pretext for horrifying treatment of Jews. But the times and the spiritual understanding of most Christians have changed. In no sense was the film an incitement. It’s role has been very positive.

I do not excuse Mel his tirade. My guess is that these thoughts were implanted in him early on in life by his Holocaust-denying father, who seems to be most charitably regarded as an eccentric man. I do know that during the controversy over The Passion of the Christ not one incident of personal anti-Semitic behavior by Mel Gibson was ever brought to the public’s attention. Gibson has worked with plenty of Jews in the film industry, and his behavior must have been impeccable, given the widespread desire to dig up dirt on him.

So the man has dark thoughts, which he had evidently repressed until alcohol temporarily altered his brain chemistry. He has stated that he repents, and I will await the results of his rehabilitation efforts with avid attention. I do not in any way excuse his behavior. But I hope for the redemption of his sins, as I hope for the redemption of mine.

Those who condemned the film without ever seeing it might do some reflecting of their own. Could their reflexive condemnation have aggravated an old tumor on the soul of Mel Gibson? Could their brave strutting nourish tumors on other souls and give comfort to those who seek to prove nefarious plots on the part of Jews?

Maybe they have something to think about, too.

Thomas Lifson is the editor and publisher of The American Thinker.


Thomas Lifson

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