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July 31, 2006

Give Mel Gibson a Break

Mel Gibson's arrest for drunk driving was bad enough to make me cringe, but what he said while being arrested was truly horrible. I won't quote any excerpts here, but probably most readers have already heard about his anti-semitic remarks and his arrogance ("I own this town") already.

Call me a bleeding-heart if you want to, but after I read his apology I decided the poor man should be forgiven.

Here is his apology in full. I'll explain my thinking in a minute:

After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the LA County Sheriffs. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person. I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said. Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the deputies involved for my belligerent behavior. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry. I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health.

Why forgive the man? Well, first, I don't believe Gibson is a closet anti-Semite. As Dr. James R. Milam and Katherine Ketcham write in UNDER THE INFLUENCE: A Guide to the Myths and Realities of Alcoholism, "Alcohol’s effect on the brain causes severe psychological and emotional distortions of the normal personality. Sobriety reveals the alcoholic’s true personality." Add to that the fact that Gibson's father has some issues with Jews. So it isn't as if Gibson was raised in a particularly politically-correct environment.

In fact, if you think about what most people involved in the arts say about the truly creative, that energy nearly always flows from a tortured soul. Comedians, artists, musicians, dancers, actors – the most outrageously talented almost always are a little messed up. Maybe they suffered a terrible loss as a child, or maybe they were abused as a child, or maybe they were indoctrinated with hate as a child and have struggled as an adult to overcome it. And that has left them tortured. And really, if you've seen any of Gibson's movies you can readily see the man is a tortured, creatively brilliant soul. It's as plain as day.

Why would Gibson be particularly tortured at this time? Here's my theory. Conspiracy nuts know a lot of things that are not true, but they also tend to know some true things that other people do not know. If I'm Mel Gibson and the Middle East situation is about to blow up and take the whole world with it, and I know a thing or two about the real history of Israel and the so-called "Jewish conspiracy," but struggle to discern which is true and which is not while trying to maintain a relationship with my father and deal with the cognitive dissonance that entails, I think I might take up drinking about now. Things are not looking good.

But in today's environment, only conspiracy nuts, crazy people, or tortured souls who have had too much to drink tend to have the nerve to point out that something is amiss (for the record, I do not agree with what Gibson said; I merely think some unspeakable manipulation of the Jewish people is going on here). Rather than booting Gibson out of Hollywood on his behind, maybe we ought to dig a little deeper into what pushed his father off the deep end and nearly pushed Mel along with him. Maybe, if we set aside political correctness for a minute and try to see what is really going on behind the curtain, we might be able to save the Jewish people – and ourselves – from a nuclear holocaust.

Posted by Becky at July 31, 2006 11:18 AM