• Police in Malibu, California, got a rare treat this week when they encounteredPassion of the Christ producer-director Mel Gibson as he prepared for his next “dead language” film.
    Delivering
    his lines in a slurred dialect of anti-Semitic – a language spoken only
    by a primitive tribe of amateur linguists – Mr. Gibson gave the
    officers a preview of coming attractions for his new film Nosedive… – ScrappleFace
  • The best case that can be made for Gibson’s
    belief system now is that he’s anti-Semitic only when he’s three sheets
    to the wind. And really, now. Are you in the habit of declaring, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world” when you get
    pie-eyed? Or simply of muttering, “F-cking Jews”? Or of asking your
    arresting officer, “Are you a Jew?” (Here Gibson revealed an
    anti-Jewish bigotry so all-consuming that he couldn’t even get his
    ethnic stereotypes straight. The Jews control international banking, Mel. It’s the Irish who control the police.) For
    good measure, Gibson turned on a policewoman observing his meltdown and
    said, “What do you think you’re looking at, sugar t-ts?” – Timothy Noah, Slate
  • There’s a lot to dislike about Gibson. He is given to furious tirades
    against homos-xuals of the sort that make one wonder if he has some
    kind of subliminal or “unaddressed” problem. His vulgar and nasty
    movies, which also feature this prejudice, are additionally replete
    with the cheapest caricatures of the English. Braveheart and The Patriot are
    two of the most laughable historical films ever made. (Englishmen don’t
    form picket lines outside movie theatres when “stereotyped,” but
    still.) He has told interviewers that his wife, the mother of his
    children, is going to hell because she subscribes to the wrong
    Christian sect (a view that he justifies as “a pronouncement from the
    chair”). And it has been obvious for some time to the most meagre
    intelligence that he is sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred. – Christopher Hitchens, Slate
  • The anti-Jewish thing has been tattooed into Mel Gibson’s
    forehead and there’s no laser procedure that will remove it. There’s
    only one way to deal with it, and that’s what Henry IIdid after
    Thomas Becket
    was murdered. Gibson needs to do penance. He needs to visit a prominent
    temple, take his shirt off, kneel on the stone floor and submit to
    lashings by a team of rabbis. Repeatedly, I mean. For weeks and
    probably months to come. He needs to make a show of grovelling at the
    feet of Hollywood’s Jewish bigwigs… UPDATE: Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson and RiskyBiz blogger once again runs a Mel Gibson statement ahead of everyone else. Gibson has stopped short of agreeing to be lashed by rabbis in penance for his anti-Semitic remarks last weekend, as I half-seriously suggested he do yesterday, but he is saying, humbly, that he wants to sit down with Jewish community leaders and get his head straight. – Hollywood Elsewhere
  • I’m told by a source intimate with his situation tonight that Mel
    Gibson “was really on the verge of suicide because he felt he was
    helpless to alcohol and didn’t know what to do about it.” Sure,
    my reaction was: sounds like spin. But the source here is someone I’ve
    known closely for years. –Deadline Hollywood Daily

  • A reminder that some of the
    sharpest reviewers
    saw Gibson’s agenda in The Passion of the Christ even as others saw
    it as a political opportunity for the Christianist wing of the
    Republican party. – Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish

  • Can The Road Warrior
    survive this brutal setback? Time will tell. People tend to be pretty
    forgiving when apologies are part of the equation, although I don’t see
    Gibson directing Fiddler on the Roof any time soon. – Cheezhead

  • Listening to conservative talk radio this evening, I was surprised
    to hear little sympathy for Gibson. Not many were buying the theory
    that his anti-Semitic rantings were caused by his drunkenness. I agree. I haven’t been drunk since my high school days. But I
    remember that guys who were jerks before they got drunk turned into
    bigger jerks after downing a six-pack. Angry guys got angrier. Funny
    guys got funnier. Alcohol brought out what was inside them. – Church of the Churchless

  • Playing
    against type doesn’t work in the movies or in reality. If Colin Farrell
    got drunk and did something crazy the media would hardly bat an
    eyelash, his image is that of the drunken bad boy anyway. It is what we
    expect from Colin. But
    goodie-goodie Mel Gibson is a different story. Of course he was already
    under fire from the Jewish community concerning the depiction of Jews
    in Passion of the Christ and his father had been quoted diminishing the
    Holocaust. So this offence was the third strike for Mel. And it set off
    an atomic bomb. – The Origin of Brands