A Drunken Mind

Will Mel Gibson ever eat lunch in this town again? Well maybe, though if I were him, I wouldn't stop by Canter's. By now that restaurant must have named some sandwich after him. Perhaps it's the Ham on Riot, or maybe the Roast Beef au Jus, hold the Jews.

With all that is going on in the world of course the buzz is about Mel's latest social infraction, the least of which probably was his stupid anti-semitic tirade. On a certain level that was not really as serious as the drunken driving/resisting arrest/collusion with ther Malibu police force. As for his personal opinions, lamentable as they may be, he has a right to be a bigot and a hypocrite. Just as we all have a right to boycott his movies and call him the asshole that he is.

Although the Anti-Defamation League has ostensibly accepted his contrition, there are no mea culpas that he can utter that can convince me that he is not the virulent anti-Semite that his father is. I firmly believe the adage that a drunken mind speaks a sober heart. I've found that a person's true character, the one hiding behind the socialization of the super ego, does usually emerge in the drunken state. He did not utter a string of anti-Semitic epithets, including Big Lie material about "Jews starting all wars" that would have pleased Joseph Goebbels, in his state of inebriation, unless they were lurking there ready to explode.

For the record, I did not pay to go see "The Passion of the Christ," acknowledging the warnings of offensive material, but when I finally watched it on TV, my impression was that the Romans came off a lot worse than the Jews. I did not consider it an anti-Semitic movie despite the dangers inherent in repeating the passion play and stirring up the negative passions of the Faithful. It was very personal moviemaking, brutal and sincere and rather interesting. This latest incident, though, exposes the artist outside of the art, rather like Woody Allen's amoral meanderings, which contradicted the wit and humanism of his oeuvre.

The issue of Gibson's outlandish invective is especially sensitive nowadays, when the Israelis are continuing to devastate Lebanon in what has become a brutal and heavy-handed attempt to squash Hezbollah. As defensible as their initials actions are, the consequences and collateral damage to the Lebanese population will likely do more to stir more hatred against the Israelis. I believe that it was intentional provocation by Hezbollah, through their Iranian sponsors, that suckered Israel into perpetrating this onslaught. Of course Hezbollah camps in the middle of civilian areas just so the kind of tragedy that befell Qana would raise the ire of the world against Israel (and by extension, the Jews).

A very broad, though obvious historical connection, links the Gibson incident to the Lebanese incursion. If it weren't for instititutional anti-Semitism of the kind that Gibson was and is party to, European Jewry would not have been destroyed, leading to the formation of Israel and the bunker mentalilty under which that state has had to exist. It's unbelievable, though predictably human, how much agony and horror has emerged from that little religious schism between Old Jews and New Ones.

And I choose not to see Mr. Gibson's upcoming "Apocalypoto," about the decline of the Mayan civilization (probably caused by some Jewish fur traders or something). Although I am a little sorry his projected Holocaust series has been shelved by Disney and ABC. But I guess his father's happy.