Amateur Megalomania

Mel, Mel, Mel.

I’ve been a fan for a long time.  I’ve been a fan of a lot of actors who turn out to have despicable views.  I try hard to seperate the performance from the ideology.  As someone of a conservative nature, I’d quickly be out of actors if I started throwing people overboard for saying stupid things.

But that doesn’t mean Gibson gets a pass here.  Certainly he has issues.  But before I brand someone an anti-Semite, I’m curious about some things here.

There’s no secret that Gibson’s father is a raving anti-Semite who would be more at home hanging out with Hizbollah or a Nazi beer hall than any church I might recognize.  He could patent his own form of crazy.

Imagine growing up with that crap all of your life.  You think some of it might stick in the darkest pits of your mind?

So, to be an anti-Semite, or a racist, or whatever, do you have to display the unseemly traits openly, or is it enough to just think them?  Obviously I don’t know Mel Gibson, but when The Passion of the Christ came out, Gibson haters consumed themselves looking for overt anti-Semitism in his history.  I don’t think they found much, other than his nutcase father.

So if Gibson has this deep rooted problem, but manages to squelch it, has he ‘sinned’?  Or must we be pure of any unpleasant thought at all times?

By all accounts, (assuming this isn’t some cynical attempt to change the subject on his part) Gibson is having some serious alcoholism problems.  If he gets tanked up, and his inner-old-man pops out and rants about ‘them Joos’, certainly it isn’t acceptable.

But this is quite a bit different from a video tape of him coldly talking about slaughtering Jews in his spare time.  I can’t equate the two, and I certainly can’t assume that he’s a raving hater.  At least not yet.

At the worst, I think he’s struggling with a family legacy, and for the most part has had it under control.  I’m willing to keep an open mind here, pending further evidence or other incidents.

Filed under: Grab Bag