Mel: "I'm a victim." Right!

Even in his so-called apology Mel “My daddy is a Nazi” Gibson can’t avoid attacking Jews.

In an interview with Dianne Sawyer the actor claims that when one is drunk “the balance of how you see things comes out the wrong way.” How you see things? Is he saying that in fact he does see Jewish involvement in an alleged Jewish plot but that what he said just came out wrong? As he said: “I know that you just can’t, you know, roar about things like that.”

Read that statement again! He says he knows you can’t say things like that. He doesn’t say he doesn’t believe things like that only that you can talk “about things like that.” He is not retracting he’s just saying it is bad politics to make such comments in public. As Tim Rutten in the LA Times notes: “In other words, the problem with being drunk is that it robs you of the ability to balance your anti-Semitic convictions against the potential effect of their disclosure. It’s a novel argument for moderation, but somehow the suggestion that bigotry can be expressed sotto voce leaves one rather cold and --- more to the point --- doesn’t seem to give much evidence of a credible contrition.”

And what caused him to go into his vicious diatribe. Apparently it wasn’t really his fault it was the Jews who were responsible. This whining asshole claimed the cause of his outburst was the way he supposedly had his rights violated by Jewish critics of his anti-Semitic film The Passion of the Christ.

As Gibson put it: “The other place it [his hateful outburst] may have come from is, as you know, a couple of years ago I released the film Passion. Even before anyone saw a frame of the film, for an entire year, I was subject to a pretty brutal sort of public beating. During the course of that, I think I probably had my rights violated in many different ways as an American. You know, as an artist, as a Christian.”

Sure Mel we buy that lie. How was this anti-Semites rights violated? The content of his film was criticised. His close association and support for a known Jew-hater, his father, was criticised. But no one violated his rights. He obviously doesn’t know much about rights either. At no point was his life, liberty or property taken from him. In fact he used the opposition to his film to promote it and walked away with millions.

Gee, if that is how poor Mel had his rights violated I wish someone would violate my rights the same way. I could use the money. And Gibson even used to interview to to attack his critics because they didn’t apologise. “I never heard ... one single word of apology,” he complained. Why did anyone need to apologise?

Gibson rewrote the Gospel stories to make them even more anti-Jewish than they already were. Purely extra Biblical scenes of a Jewish looking Satan whispering into the ears of the rabbis was added. You can’t find that in the New Testament. It just isn’t there. But this didn’t stop Gibson from throwing it in and then complaining that Jews were violating his rights by complaining about such additions as this.

Joan Rivers got it right when she said: “He is an anti-Semitic son of a bitch.”

We also need to look at how Gibson very cleverly does a side step and seems to say one thing while not saying it at all. In his drunken outburst he blamed Jews for all the wars of the world. Now he says: “I don’t believe that Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” What he doesn’t answer is he thinks them responsible for many of the wars, most the wars, none of the wars, etc. As long as there is one war somewhere in the history of the world which can’t be attributed to the Jews then his statement can be said quite honestly even if the thinks Jews responsible for every other war in history. Sawyer is a lightweight intellectual and Gibson can play her like a violin.

She should have said: “That’s good Mr. Gibson. So what percentage of the wars do you believe the Jews are responsible for? I mean you say it’s not 100% but that doesn’t mean you don’t think they started 99% of them. Can you actually answer the issue once and for all?” Watch him squirm.

How about asking him about specific wars. Does he think the Jews were responsible for World War II, World War I, the Civil War, etc.? She should have narrowed it down. But that wouldn’t be good for the network and it’s parent company, which happens to be distributing Gibson’s newest film. So for them to secure a profit on the deal they need to smooth over the flak Gibson got for his remarks. So a softer interview was a more profitable one.

In the past Gibson was asked if he believe in the Holocaust, I don’t think he does, and he gave an answer that anyone, such as his father, who doesn’t believe the Holocaust took place could give. Gibson said of course he knew Jews died and a great tragedy took place. Every holocaust revisionist around would say the same thing. He was not asked if he thought there were gas chambers and an attempt to gas Jews. Revisionists have their own meaning for the Holocaust and feel they can honestly say they believe in it. Even when they deny it.

Rutten summarised the situation well I think:

What any honest reader will find there is a self-pitying series of rationalizations for inexcusable conduct. This time around, we can presume only that they were soberly conveyed. So, at the end of the day, what you've got is a guy whose anti-Semitic attitudes are so deeply ingrained and unexamined that he cannot control them even when his career is on the line. If Gibson's employees and business associates really believe that nobody else is going to notice this, that these interviews "put the issue behind us," then the filmmaker is, in fact, enmeshed in a conspiracy. Its actors, however, are not Jews or Zionists or Masons or international bankers or any of the other phantoms pulled from his rat bag of paranoid bigotries. No, to the extent Mel Gibson has a problem beyond being Mel Gibson, it's that he's surrounded by a venal cabal of the clueless.