Mel Gibson’s Greatest Sin
On a recent episode of the popular game show “Family Feud,” the contestants were asked to name something most commonly associated with San Francisco. Like Mormons to Utah or Dukes to Hazzard, everyone and their brother knows San Fran is a haven for homosexuals, but after saying “trolleys,” the “Golden Gate Bridge” and “Rice-a-Roni,” the feud ended with both families refusing to answer the obvious. After their defeat, the number three answer on the board was finally revealed and lo-and-behold, the survey said: “Gays.” The contestants pretended to be surprised. I couldn’t get over their cowardice. “Gays” would have been my first answer.
And unconstrained by the rules of political correctness, no doubt “gays” would have been most people’s first answer. There’s nothing wrong or homophobic about noting that there are a lot of gay people in San Francisco, but like the mere mentioning of blacks or Jews in polite conversation, simply broaching certain subjects—particularly relating to minorities—these are things we are just not supposed to talk about, that is, unless one happens to be black, Jewish or homosexual. If either of those feuding families had an openly gay member, they might have won the game, but as for the rest of us, we have been trained well—and no doubt, political correctness now dominates much of our public discourse.
Political correctness did not hold sway when actor Mel Gibson went on his now famous phone tirade, spewing racist and violent language at his former lover, Russian pianist Oksana Grigorieva. Many observers agree that Gibson’s movie career might be over and after hearing the phone call, it’s easy to understand why—as you listen to this vile man verbally abusing the mother of his child in the harshest manner imaginable.
But what aspect of Gibson’s behavior is now being called a career-ender? That he was misogynistic? “30 Rock” star Alec Baldwin physically threatened and verbally abused his own daughter in a voice message that was released to the public and his career couldn’t be better. Was Gibson’s worst offense that he physically threatened a woman? Actor Charlie Sheen shot his ex-wife Kelly Preston in the arm, was recently charged with assaulting his third wife, Brooke Mueller, and yet his television show “Two and a Half Men” is about to begin taping a new season, with its main star in tow.
No, when you break it down, Gibson’s worst offense seems to be that he used racist language, even using the “N” word. The well-publicized phone call only reinforced the image of Gibson as a racist and homophobe, based on his past remarks about Jews and homosexuals, and his conservative Catholic creed certainly doesn’t win him any affection from the rest of the Hollywood set. Still, if my own father ever heard me talking to a wife, or girlfriend, or any woman, in the same hateful way Gibson did, he would slap me silly and rightfully so. The racism would not be condoned or go unnoticed, but in the grand scheme of my offenses, it would be an afterthought—and also, rightfully so. Would a black man, whose wife or daughter was treated in this manner, be more concerned that their abuser used the word “cracker,” or about the physical threats and abusive language specifically? Would a Jewish man react any differently? A homosexual man, in defending his sister or mother?
Gibson’s blatant racism is not to be excused, but what does it say about a society in which men can viciously abuse women, verbally or physically, with less damage to their career and reputation than if they use racial slurs? What does it say that director Roman Polanski can drug and rape a 13-year-old girl and Hollywood rallies to his defense, but Gibson is now—possibly permanently—persona non grata?
Political correctness is a hell of a thing. It’s the reason in old episodes of “I Love Lucy” the actors are always smoking, yet still sleeping in separate beds, while today having a cigarette on screen receives an R rating, but near soft-core pornography is commonplace. It’s hard to imagine comedies like “Blazing Saddles,” “The Jerk” or “Airplane” being made today, all full of racist and gay stereotype humor. This is not to say that genuine racism or homophobia should be promoted or even tolerated, only that the degree of offense we place on it today is perhaps perverse in its proportion, stifling speech and even art in unprecedented ways. What is socially acceptable to discuss continues to become narrower. And in the 1970’s or 80’s, contestants on Family Feud would have been much more likely to acknowledge the basic, glaring fact that plenty of homosexuals live in San Francisco.
Despite their various offenses, I remain a fan of Baldwin and Sheen’s work, and even Polanski’s, whose latest film “The Ghost Writer” is a solid political thriller. The same goes for Gibson and I would like to see more out of this great actor and director. His language in that phone call was deplorable, but far worse is his treatment of women, something that hasn’t seemed to affect the careers of many of his Hollywood brethren.
At root, political correctness represents a political morality—something that continues to trump old-fashioned, conventional morality in the most bizarre ways imaginable.
I think that hearing those words, racist as well as misogynistic, coming out of the mouth of such an esteemed talent as Gibson in such an angry and hateful manner is shocking.
But what kind of woman would release these secretly recorded tapes of the father of her child to the media? She knew what the impact would be.
Its clear this woman cares far more deeply for money than for her daughter. The two of them are made for each other.
Mel Gibson is an anti-semite and a liberal. In fact beyond the Lethal Weapon films I find the man to be a complete and utter boor.
i’m glad oksana made those tapes in order to show mel gibson’s true character. mel is a super rich and talented, but as a human being he is a ZERO. he is not a christian, jesus did not hate anybody.
@ Nate: Anti-semite I’ll grant, but liberal? Are we talking about the same Mel Gibson? The whole blog entry is about how un-liberal he is, and why this is the only thing getting him into trouble (rather than his relatively mild caddishness).
@ Jack Hunter: Apart from the slightly sanctimonious, Economist-leader-like tone (I admit I absolutely hate it when opinion columnists say “and rightly so”; yes, we know you think you’re right, you’re an op-ed columnist), I think this piece really hits the nail on the head. I know arch-liberals personally who openly talk of women as nothing more than objects for their gratification, but who moralize constantly about the supposed deadly threats of racism, homophobia and, yes, sexism. It seems as long as you pay lip-service to the idea of “equality of genders”, you can happily screw around without any pangs of conscience.
I do not recognize religions, ideologies or homosexuals as equivalent to racial and ethnic minorities. Shouting bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism and most ridiculous of all: homophobia, is a trick used by powerful bigots to silence their critics.
I’m not sure serial sex murders can handle the truth about homosexuality, and militant atheist Khazar Judaism is a murderous totalitarian ideology. No one cares about assimilated Jews or Arab Jews, and non-Zionist religious Jews are harmless except to themselves and their families.
We need to stop getting so hung up on language and start focusing on action. I’ve been called all sorts of names in my lifetime and if I get offended I’m ‘sensitive’. I’ve been made fun of for being fat, for being adopted, for being an only child, for being Southern, for not being Catholic, for being artistic, for being liberal, then for being conservative. Go figure! But it’s my fault if I can’t take it. Sticks and stones blah blah blah. I’d like to see some of the namecalling all these people calling Mel a homophobe, a racist, an anti-Semite have spewed in their lifetime. His sin the first time was driving drunk; his sin this time MAY be beating her and/or his child. Maybe. I really doubt he did that. But if he did, let’s focus on that and not this racist crap.
Mel really comes across to me as a broken person, and not a racist; he isn’t thinking clearly and is barely able to string thoughts together. He uses racial epithets because he simply has no other words to hurl at her, to get back at her for hurting him. He sounds like a hurt child, and emotionally he likely is. He feels his trophy wife isn’t treating him properly, isn’t respecting him, and he is saying the most vile things he can think of to try and vent his hurt onto her.
He is broken and hurt. This doesnt’ excuse his behavior toward her; the misgyny is clear. I agree that everyone is missing the big picture of how he treats Oksana, and is focusing on the wrong thing.
The last episode of Gibson’s proved Hunter’s point even more forcefully than this latest one. People were far more upset at his crazy anti-Semitic rant than they were at the fact that he was driving a 1-2 ton piece of machinery while intoxicated, an act that could have killed a number of innocent people, be they Jews or Gentiles. Political Correctness is a brainwashing disease.
And the old fashioned restrictions are distinct from today’s p.c. cult. Even children probably understood the silliness of having married characters sleeping in twin beds on a t.v. show or not being able to use the word “pregnant”. It was silly, but it was a harmless silliness and outdatedness, whereas the new restrictions are cultlike and emblematic of false beliefs, beliefs like doing something physically harmful to yourself like smoking is much worse than doing something psychologically (and possibly physically) harmful to yourself and others like refusing to take sex seriously. The extreme over-the-top code about sex on t.v. back then was not specifically the point, it was a reflection of how a healthy society recognized the importance and seriousness of sex, with its distinction between monogamy and casual sex, and distinction between intimacy and pornographic titillation. The people who make shows today believe in no such distinctions, but they do believe in a health and safety bureaucracy that can and should regulate your right to vices like fatty foods and tobacco. Really, the difference is we used to recognize the distinction between vices that hurt only ourselves and shameful behavior that hurts us and others in its immorality. Genuine sins are now shunted aside as if they don’t exist, but it hasn’t quenched our thirst as human beings to have some sort of standard, has it? Only p.c. fashion is our guidepost now. And health and safety, environmentalism, sexism, race sensitivity, all these incidentals are far more fashionable than the overwhelmingly more important subject of Judeo-Christian mores about sex. But wait a few decades. Unlike truth, fashion changes.
Political correctness, as practiced in the USA, is an outgrowth of human nature that primarily serves 2 groups of people.
To the politically ambitious, it is a useful proxy by which to slander opponents who happen to hold conservative, non-racist, non-homophobic, etc… opinions. To the emotionally insecure, it is a security blanket against a “vicious” world that refuses to grant them “happiness”.
Unfortunately, America has no shortage of either group of people.
I have not been to San Francisco and don’t most immediatedly associate it as gay. I’d have said Golden Gate bridge,, Greatful Dead and Jefferson Airplane bands ,49ers football and Giants baseball.I would say Gays before rice a roni .
The fact that other sleazebags who are more PC get a pass may be because many in positions of power in this country realize the fight against a return to accepting attitudes and behavior such as demonstrated by Gibson is an ongoing battle while Polanski,Sheen and Baldwin’s lapses will likely not influence society to return to it’s darker past when homphobia, racial and religious bigotry was acceptable along with to a lesser degree some physical and verbal abuse of women. I recall the line in the great 50′s sitcom The Honeymooners when Ralph asked Norton what do women always fall for and Ed answered “a left hook.” That was considered harmless. I’m not saying it’s not funny as are many ethnic and racial jokes. The problem seems to me to be that many of those laughing have no problem with a society that accepts that behavior as OK, and that the people being joked about as somehow less deserving of the same opportunities and legal protections as themselves. I suspect Gibson and many of his supporters do fall into that group and if so then coming down harder on him seems to make sense.
I have met and dealt with “abused” women. To be frank, I can understand why they end up being abused. Women usually do not beat up men because they are physically smaller and in a fight they would lose. Instead they are manipulative and passive aggressive and as dear, dear Oksana has done, staked out the “moral high ground.” as does AIPAC, MAD and all of the domestic violence tyrants. What do 50 battered women have in common? They can’t keep their mouths shut. Why do the words haridans, fishwives, harpies, battle axes,, etc, etc. refer to women. And I cannot help but believe that a Thesaurus of the synonyms for this class of words would have one which would fit Oksana to a tee. The sad things is that Mel let her get to him instead of keeping his mouth shut. Consider the numerous females in the ODYSSEY. Two I would love to meet: Penlope and Nasakia (?). So it is not uncommon to see these “abused” women go from abusive relationship to abusive relationship;
But I think the issue is broader. Freud commented in Civilization and its Discontents, that a much freer sexual life would rid people of a lot of neurosis. He then cautioned, but what would the impact be if the customs and safeguards on sexual behavior that had developed over thousands of years were dismantled. I think that the “morality” that has developed over the last 50 years realizes his fears. It is an attempt to create some kind of a morality the foundation for which is anything sexual goes, rather than human sexual behavior being restricted to marriage and for the purpose of procreation. But even now not anything goes. A man on probation for drug delaing loved male dogs and I mean in the truly sexual sense. He bent and the male dog…. Since in my state bestiality recently was criminalized, the federal court judge sent him away for three years. What a waste of tax dollars. And there was nothing reported in the newspaper that the dogs were anything other than well fed and well cared for..
There is something greatly wrong with Wesern Civilization when how we treat outsiders is more important than how we treat our own.
Only a fool would write off Mel Gibson’s career this early in the game. In spite of his brutishness, Mel’s outspokeness has garnered a lot of sympathy from middle America, now tired of having to keep its mouth shut for so long in the face of obvious injustices and who whole-heartedly agree with the majority of what he’s said.
@nate: If someone is telling the truth, and one of the “chosen” finds it offensive, does that still automatically make him an anti-semite?
Or, to put it another way, if telling the plain truth, makes one an “anti-semite,” then the country and the world need more “anti-semites.”
The only reason that Mel Gibson is always being demonized in the news because he made the movie Passion of Christ against the well of Hollywood elites. Since then he was labeled an anti-semite and from that point on the controlled media well keep focusing on any thing he says.
yeah.. he also hates the English…. I refer you to the film Braveheart
The most obvious fact about Mel Gibson is that he is an alcoholic. Alcoholism is the root of all his insane raving and ranting. If he will go on a program to stop drinking he can change his reputation in about two years. That is the time it seems to take for people to accept that a regular drunkard has changed into a sober citizen. If he does not stop drinking, things will only get worse.
Lofs of people go on “rants.” I doubt any family hasn’t seen a periodic rant – son against father, husband against wife — with four letter epithets, the whole shooting match. Is there one reader who hasn’t similarly lost his temper? Would you want the entirely of your character judged by such instances? Frank Lloyd Wright was famous for “losing it,” as were President Nixon and Kennedy, as was Jesus even, when he threw the money lenders out of the temple.
I see this as a Mars-Venus confrontation: Gibson as Mars yells and attacks straightforward, while Grigorieva as Venus demurely schemes — while Holier-Thou-Thou’s moralize and exploit the story.
None of this is any of our business. All of you would hate to have your family quarrels aired publicly. Mel’s drinking is only a symptom of a deeper depression and that’s his business to deal with or not. Most drunk drivers do not get in accidents, they usually err too much on the side of caution. which is how they occasionally get stopped. As an atheist I thought Passion was great and Mel pulverized the self-appointed organized Jewish community whom the rest of us are heartily sick of. Mel never said ALL Jews were responsible for all wars.
But some Jews played a goodly part in getting us in WW1, WW2 and both Gulf Wars. That’s a lot.
The Russian woman seems to be scam artist.
Frankly, Mel is better off going back to Australia.
The Hollywood folks can take Hollywood and do the anatomically impossible with it. Many of us can’t wait to get out of California.
Both Gibson and Gregoriova chose to be entertainers, and I for one am being entertained.
But I also have to admit to being entertained by the discomfort of, ahem, certain people not too far from this website.
Schadenfreude, Yes!
Mel’s drinking may well be a symptom of a deeper depression. The point is that he has to stop drinking–permanently–is he is going to tackle that problem instead of making everything worse. Mel Gibson is a man of talent and it would be a tragedy if his life was to go down the pan. His real friends will be saying to him exactly what I am saying.
Mel can drink in moderation if alcohol is the problem.
I get tired of the obnoxious collectivist 12 goosestep
prohibitionist mentality. Americans tend to be all or
nothing extremists. Real friends, Harrington, mind
their own business.
Mel Gibson is in some ways, very different that the Hollywood Crowd. In other ways, not so different. He’s arrogant, self centered, tends to insult, abuse and humiliate others – that’s not really Left, Right, Liberal or Conservative. Alec Baldwin and Mel Gibson are full of themselves, take themselves extremely seriously.
As for Mel’s politics, religion – it comes from his father who is a throw back, traditionalist Catholic and yes, this type has issues with “The Jews”.
But, I haven’t seen any anti Jewish themes in any of Mel Gibson’s movies.
On the other hand, Gibson’s Braveheard and The Patriot are viciously anti English – presents basically all English people as cruel, cowardly, sadists.
And making White English speaking men – as THE EVIL, Bad guys, what could be more “Hollywood than that”?
When Mel Gibson does an honest portrayal of Communism in the Ukraine in the 1920s and 30s and casts actors who look like the Soviet leaders that implemented the mass starvation against the Ukrainians, then maybe Jewish groups can have some beef with Mel.
As it stands, he’s just another guy doing the Hollywood thing.
This is not to say that genuine racism or homophobia should be promoted or even tolerated, only that the degree of offense we place on it today is perhaps perverse in its proportion, stifling speech and even art in unprecedented ways.
Hits the nail on the head. This is like an anti-anti-racist manifesto. Anti-anti-racism is like anti-anti-communism, in that the point isn’t to be pro-communist, but rather just combatting the absurd excesses of anti-communism.
Matt, those comments sound like someone who hit the nail in his own head. The anti-anti-communism of the 50s and 60s was pro-communism to the core as even Buckley noted at the time.
“Homophobia” ?! Most people think homosexuality is a deep perversion, so we are supposed to lose our free speech rights
because the “gay” lobby objects ?
It’s just amazing how the braindead so-called “conservatives” always end up adopting leftist cultural premises after a certain period of time. Who needs it ? If I want to read this nonsense I can go to commondreams or counterpunch, ad
nauseum.
Never thought of Mel’s films as anti-English but being Anglo-Irish myself maybe he has a point here. Certainly Churchill was one of the most murderous swine who ever lived.
Or is Frankie D’s “good war” now a part of the “conservative” pantheon too ?
“There is something greatly wrong with Western Civilization when how we treat outsiders is more important than how we treat our own.”
There is something greatly wrong with Mike when he does not realize that the supreme product of Western Civilization, Christianity, denies his distinction between “outsiders” and “our own.”
Nate Weinstein is an anti-semite because he and his ilk are incredibly harsh to the Semite Palestinians, and especially the Semites living in the West Bank of Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of Semite Palestine is a horrendous act of anti-Semitism.