I am mystified by the latest news stories on Mel Gibson. To further clarify, I am certainly not mystified that Mr. Gibson has been caught drinking and driving. Nor am I mystified by his apparent anti-Semitic and male chauvinistic ramblings while being arrested. What I am mystified by, is the unbelievable comments and support of "fans" for Mr. Gibson. If you look at the posted comments to any of the related news stories on the internet, the comments range from "leave him alone, he has a problem, he didn't mean what he said" to my favorite "haven't you made a mistake in life. He didn't mean what he said, he was under the influence. He has a real problem, it's a sickness"
Granted, I do agree that alcoholism is a sickness but when you are drunk, alcohol doesn't have the ability to make you say things you wouldn't normally think or feel. You do not suddenly have anti Semitic thoughts placed into your head. You don't all of sudden become a raging male chauvinist or anti-Semitic asshole. Those ideas and opinions were there before the alcohol "brought it out". The alcohol was merely the catalyst that failed to stop him from actually saying what he really thinks. Sorry Gibson fans, the booze didn't make him say it. It just helped to let us see the real Mel.
JB wrote a good post about the whole Gibson debacle. I won't bother posting all of the details on this blog.
Honestly, I have never been a huge Gibson fan. I have found that I just can't get past his personal/religious beliefs. He has made speeches opposing abortion access, the use of contraceptives, and equal rights for gays and lesbians. It's fine that he wants to practice within his own religion but he should just shut up and keep his intolerance to himself and not push is extreme Catholic ideology on the rest of us. There was a reformation started in 1517 for a reason!
The fact that Mel is so dismissive and intolerant of Jews, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights begs this question: If you are religious and practice the teachings of Jesus Christ, aren't you a hypocrite if you spread hate, lies and intolerance?
Quote of the day:
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal
4 comments:
EXACTLY!! His extremely stringent beliefs and his views on a variety of issues have always been distasteful. Now we get the FULL picture and it's even uglier than I'd imagined...It'll be interesting to see how Disney handles the marketing of his forthcoming movie...
Hitchens on Mel: http://www.slate.com/id/2146880/nav/tap1/
He IS a jerk, but I still like most of his movies. Racist and sexist, though he is. Mind you this has convinced me to avoid paying money to see him do anything.
Speaking of anti-semitism, I wonder if there are any other such terms in relation to any other religious, cultural or race groups. For example, we see lots of anti-muslimism these days; yet no one calls it that. In fact they don't even call it racist in the usa: "patriot," is what they call it down there nowadays.
Anyway. Just stirring things up as usual.
merdus
it's true. The US propaganda about Muslims is frightening. Things have not changed too much since the Crusades, have they?
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