[Academy Award winner and self-described alcoholic Mel Gibson launched an anti-Semitic diatribe against police officers arresting him for drunk-driving in Los Angeles.]
Fucking Jews, the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.
[To the officer arresting Gibson]
Are you a Jew?
41 comments
From what I heard, Mel's dad, Hutton Gibson, has been known to spew anti-Semitic diatribes that make Mel's outbursts sound like B'nai B'rith speeches.
This quote is fine for FSTDT. However elswhere in the media people are acting like the anti-semitic comments are the worst thing in the world. I'm not one to talk shit about the Jews, but I can't believe that making offensive remarks about Jews is considerd worse then endangering people's lives by drunk driving.
I guess DUI's are par for the course in Hollywood.
This quote is fine for FSTDT. However elswhere in the media people are acting like the anti-semitic comments are the worst thing in the world. I'm not one to talk shit about the Jews, but I can't believe that making offensive remarks about Jews is considerd worse then endangering people's lives by drunk driving.
I guess DUI's are par for the course in Hollywood.
Then you should start a website where people submit links to articles about DWI arrests.
In the vein of Winston Churchill, tomorrow Mel will be sober, but religious intolerance will still be ugly.
Also drug and alchohol scandals are done to death on page 6. Here's something with a twist.
My father used to have a serious problem with alcoholism. He would try and try to get it under control and would relapse over and over again. Finally, with the help of a log of good people and a residential rehab clinic, he took control of it and has been sober for almost 6 years now.
He would go on massive, verbally aggressive, drunken rants daily when he was in the grip of his disease, but he never once started screaming about the jews. Or the blacks, or the asians, or the purple moon-men for that matter, because although my father was a drunken mess, he was not a racist.
I really feel for Gibson and his family. Dealing with alcoholism is a terrible, terrible burden. According to my father, you are always an alcoholic, you just manage to not drink for periods of time, and the trick is to achieve a long period of sobriety that takes you to the end of your life. But the compulsion is always there. I hope that he has the courage to seek the help he needs, and I hope he wins in his fight against alcoholism.
But that said, he would not have said those things drunk if they were not kicking around in his head before. It seems from everything I've read that this may be his father's old influence coming out when he was drunk, and he does not truly hold those opinions. I hope so. But this is a disaster for Gibson, coming on the heels of his great "Christian epic" film and its (probably unintentional) baggage of percieved anti-semitism, not to mention the publicity the film brought to his father's rather...extreme views that had previously been out of the public view.
This is going to require massive damage control by Gibson, and there are segments of our society that will never forgive or forget. To them this is merely confirmation of what they had already believed. Mel may not truly be anti-semitic, but he's never going to be able to convince a large number of people of that now.
This is obviously what Gibson believes, the booze just rendered him unable to keep his racist mouth shut.
BTW ryan, drunk-driving may be bad but it was thinking like Gibson's that led to the Holocaust and all the other death's in Europe during WWII - FORTY MILLION all told. Drunk drivers have a way to go yet before they equal that score.
It's true that you're less inhibited because you're drunk, but that doesn't mean you're speaking what you truly believe when you're drunk. Maybe because he was drunk (and grew up in an anti-semitic home as seen by his father's holocaust denial) and was angry because he was arrested for drinking said things he doesn't really mean.
Just because you call your girlfriend a bitch or a slut during a fight doesn't mean you believe it; you're not necessarily a nice person, but you also don't necessarily mean it. Additionally, Mel Gibson has been quoted as saying that anti-semitism is against being Christian.
Mel Gibson might be a fundie, but it seems to me that he took the fundamental message of christianity (peace, good will, cheek turning, et al.) to heart.
From ZadokofPavis:
This is obviously what Gibson believes, the booze just rendered him unable to keep his racist mouth shut.
BTW ryan, drunk-driving may be bad but it was thinking like Gibson's that led to the Holocaust and all the other death's in Europe during WWII - FORTY MILLION all told. Drunk drivers have a way to go yet before they equal that score.
Anyone remember the accusations of "The Passion" being anti-semitic? Is it possible that this in context puts some strenth into that accusation's accuracy?
Sandman - well put. There are folks close to me who deal with it, too. And, for the record, although you do say and do things when drunk that you might not ordinarily do, things that are fundamentally contrary to your nature or your beliefs, you will not do.
Oy.
To his credit, though, he did apologize, and he was piss drunk when he said it. That doesn't make it acceptable, but it's possible that he wasn't even aware of what he said on account of being seriously hammered. I don't know whether he really meant it or not - if he did, it's inexcusable.
This is kind of like when Rush Limbaugh made those derogatory racist statements about Donovan McNabb. He was probably high at the time, but that doesn't show that he wasn't sincere, only that he lacked the ability to keep his mouth shut about those convictions.
I don't know, man. On the Internet and elsewhere you get to joke about many things and they might just lay low in your mind until one day you're really pissed in both senses and you say them not because of how truthful you find the informational content but for the sake of profanity and shock.
I know fstdt quotes might very well fuel me into a drunk rant one day. I just don't know if I'll be calling the police fundy cocksuckers or suckers of Satan's butthole, but when you feel like insulting pretty much anything goes.
The human mind isn't so simple that there's a table of things you believe. Mel may or may not ultimately be an anti-semite and the evidence is building up one way, but there's no simple truth of the matter.
I think Mel Gibson's drunken daddy's rants had more than a little effect on Mel. My own dad was an alcoholic, and he would sometimes say stupid things about different ethnic groups. When a little kid is exposed to these kinds of thoughts, the little kid will pretty much accept it as law b/c s/he has not yet been exposed to different points of view. So on that basis, I can understand what happened here.
I can't, of course, excuse or condone it. As McCullough said, "In vino veritas." That shit has to be in there in the first place for alcohol to bring it to the surface. I too hope that this man can redeem himself--for his family's sake, but mostly for his own.
I feel sorry for anyone growing up with bigoted parents--homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, whatever. The poison gets in your mind when you're too young to know better, and it's damn hard to break free of childhood brainwashing.
I don't know if Gibson is truly an anti-Semite or not, although the evidence so far is damning. If I were him, I'd get treatment for my alcoholism first, then reach out to the Jewish community to atone for my remarks. Maybe become a spokesman for the dangers of anti-Semitism. Apologizing is a good first step, but Gibson needs to demonstrate that he rejects anti-Semitism with a permanent commitment.
Unless he really is an anti-Semite, in which case he can fuck himself with a two-by-four.
From ZadokofPavis:
"BTW ryan, drunk-driving may be bad but it was thinking like Gibson's that led to the Holocaust and all the other death's in Europe during WWII - FORTY MILLION all told. Drunk drivers have a way to go yet before they equal that score."
That is total bullshit. Anti-semitism was not the cause of World War II. You could say that type of attitude lead to the Holocaust, but it certainly didn't start the war. Drunk drivers have killed signifigantly more people then the Holocaust has. I stand by my original position. Gibson drunk driving is way worse, and much more worthy of scorn then popping off at the mouth after being stopped.
Actually Ryan, the holocaust killed 11 million people and only about 10,000 road fatalities in the US each year have alcohol as a contributing factor.
(And I agree with you that getting smashed AND going twice the speed limit is incredibly dangerous and stupid)
This is fundies say the darnedest things though, not shitwads do the stupidest things.
How do rich and famous people always get busted for drunk driving? Most people I know work crap jobs and they can afford a cab when they need to get home and not kill anyone.
Problems in his life or not, everyone is responsible for their actions.
I grew up in a very racist area where, even today, I'll occasionally hear slurs thrown around. I learned when I was quite young that it was wrong to think that way. It didn't matter that family and friends still did/do it. I figured out for myself how stupid that kind of thinking is. He is 50 years old and living in Hollywood, if he has problems with Jews he picked a bad business to get into.
If a grown man of his world experience is convinced that a race of people are 'bad' somehow, then he needs to handle it. grow up mel.
BTW, Mr. Gibson didn't seem to mind those wars when he's making a movie. he's built a career doing war/battle movies. Guess they're okay when there is a paycheck involved.
No Mel no. Even if you were drunk as a landlord when you said that comment, one, you have risked other people's lives and you have insulted another man, Irish by the way,doing his job with no more reason than releasing your rage. Please, be honest, and admit you are no saint.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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