People who make the big bucks generally work hard, and have the resources, to preserve and cultivate their public persona lest a faux pas puts their careers in a tailspin. So Mel Gibson, no stranger to controversy, has really lost it this time with his alleged anti-Semitic outbursts after being arrested Friday on drunken driving charges. No matter what he does from here, he will have his DUI tantrum dogging him.Where was Gibsons handlers when the 50-year-old star needed them? Surely more than a few agents, P.R. people and family members — and powerful friends — have intervened for high-profile people in their ugly public moments, saved the day and showed their worth in damage control. The Australian-born actor and producer had no one to zip his lip for him the other night when his 2006 Lexus was brought to a halt. He was clocked at 87 mph in a 45 mph zone when stopped, and the sheriffs office says his blood-alcohol level was 0.12, well over California’s legal limit of 0.08 percent.
Yet what Gibson said will echo through the media and Hollywood conduit for months. The report quoted Gibson, The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. He asked the officer whether he was a Jew. Gibsons litany of anger was described as a tirade, and later, when he got sober, a remorseful Gibson said he was despicable in what he said. Look for him going off for alcoholic treatment as one way to mitigate things, but maybe he should spend some time at an Anytown USA” camp or similar program set up to break down bigotry and prejudice.
Two years ago, Gibson became the darling of Christendom who regarded his The Passion of the Christ as a true godsend to Hollywood filmmaking and just what the public needed to understand what Christ endured in the crucifixion. It seemed like a year of buzz for the producer-director as the film was readied for the screen until it was eventually released massively for CD sales. Of course, much of the talk was whether The Passion was indicting Jews of that time for Christs arrest and condemnation to death on a cross. For months, the media quoted Jewish scholars and rabbis on the film and whether they could point to anti-Semitism in the high-grossing film. Gibsons latest outburst certainly gives support to what they had suspected about him. And for Christians, who identified the film they loved with Gibson the ardent believer in the Judeo-Christian experience, things begin to ring hollow.
Gibsons own father made statements that riled Jews, including one that the Holocaust was overblown and that European Jews actually had a kind of population growth spurt during the years of Nazi rule. It’s all — maybe not all fiction — but most of it is,” he told a radio station and added that gas chambers and crematoria at camps like Auschwitz were inadequate to have produced the number of deaths attributed to them. “Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it?” he said. “It takes a liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That’s why they lost the war.”
Again, wheres self-restraint here? If your son was about to release his seminal film work, already saddled with controversy, wouldnt you keep your deep-held hatreds to yourself? Maybe family members of celebrities arent as guarded as their sophisticated and managed star relatives. As for Mel Gibson, maybe arrogance just comes with his fame and celebrity. Surely, we can assume that the raging fighting in the Mideast between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon had Gibson worked up. It may have all spilled out upon his arrest. No doubt, many famous and ordinary people are voicing, with salty words, their personal thoughts about the various factions involved in that tragic conflict. Let Mel Gibsons passion be a lesson.
