The Upsides of Mel Gibson's Anti-Semitic Rant

First of all, I'd like to make it official. As far as I know I was the last person on earth who had not yet blogged about Mel Gibson, so now it's complete -- all six billion of us have made an official comment about Mel Gibson's comments.

The Chinese are still buzzing about it. By the way, are the Chinese anti-Semitic, too? Conventional wisdom is that the whole world is anti-Semitic, does that include the Chinese? What would be their grudge? You know the whole world has lost it if a Chinese guy getting pulled over for a traffic ticket in Shanghai says, "The fucking Jews!"

By the way, I have to hand it to Mel. Who would have figured that Officer Mee was Jewish? It seems like he's spent a lot of time picking out Jews from a crowd in the past. I wonder if this was a favorite past time at the Gibson house growing up. "Son, wanna go fishin' or just spot some Jews?"

The one indisputable upside of this whole fiasco is that Mel Gibson's dad must be in agony now as his son apologizes over and over to every Jew in the world. It's almost worth it for that image alone. Somebody should put him on suicide watch.

The other upside for Mel (I love how we're so familiar with Gibson now that we call him Mel, as if we all know him) is that Braveheart is now going to do killer business in the Middle East.

Since we were dorks growing up, we would listen to Queen's "We Will Rock You" before we went out to our wrestling meets in high school (by the way, is there anything gayer than a bunch of teenage boys sitting around in tights getting ready to grapple with other boys in tights, singing Queen together?). I am afraid there is now going to be a whole new generation of Hezbollah fighters sitting in their tights watching Braveheart together.

By the way, Braveheart was one of my favorite movies. Can I no longer say that? Does it make me anti-Semitic by association? Do we have to hate all Mel Gibson movies now? Even Lethal Weapon III? Why did he have to make a movie called Air America?

I wonder if Max was mad because of something the Jews did?

Which brings us to my real point. Can we all now agree that The Passion of the Christ was soooooo anti-Semitic? I thought it was that anti-Semitic when I first saw it, with all the Jews leering at Jesus and conniving to have him killed. It was so over the top. It was almost an SNL skit of what a movie would like if it was trying to be anti-Semitic.

Before Gibson's outburst people denied it, even though he admitted it was partly based on the vision of an anti-Semitic 19th century nun. But when you look at the movie now, in light of what was clearly going through Gibson's mind, it becomes undeniable.

Look at even Gibson's apology, which everyone is fawning over, it has a tone that I've heard before. It sounds like a Christian right wing guy telling me how he hates the sin of homosexuality but loves the sinner. Look at this paragraph in the apology in that light:

The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God's child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on him, but that sounds like a statement where he's saying, "Though they deserve it, I should forgive them anyway because I'm a good Christian."

Then the last lines of his apology seem particularly unrepentant:

"This is about real life and recognizing the consequences hurtful words can have. It's about existing in harmony in a world that seems to have gone mad ... because of the Jews."

Okay, I added the "because of the Jews." But you know he thought it.

Look, I'm busy trying to find the silver lining here. So, here's a summary of the upsides: 1. Gibson's dad in mortal pain over son's groveling to the Jews. 2. Braveheart sales through the roof in the Middle East. 3. Now everyone is forced to admit The Passion of the Christ was clearly anti-Semitic (let alone one of the most, boring, bloody and ridiculous movies ever made). 4. The line, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?" becomes an instant classic, single-handedly bringing the phrase "sugar tits" back into the popular vernacular.

You can't say I don't try hard to find the positives in this world gone mad (and you know whose fault that is).

The Young Turks

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