My experience is that's a common misconception, but ultimately wrong. (IMHO) Drunkenness doesn't reveal character; it distorts it. Especially alcoholic drinking.
I would have to state that alcohol definately lowers inhibitions in 99.9% of the population thus tending to reveal our true feelings and personality. Maybe Mel Gibson is just unique, but I doubt it.
No, hate crimes are constitutional, but Gibson is not guilty of a hate crime. He didn't ACT upon his thoughts. Now, if he would have plowed into a synagogue with swastikas painted on his car, that's a different story. My personal belief is that we have to have a special place in the law set aside for crimes so heinous as to deter them in the future. After all, how many Timothy McVeighs have you seen pop up after Oklahoma City? (yes, I know his was not a "hate" crime.) How many people have been tied to a truck and dragged until dead due to race? Sure, racism and hate still exist, but there is a certain deterence that exists knowing that your little crime is going to be treated differently. At least that is my opinion, I could be wrong.
The level of outrage from the left over Gibson's remarks is astounding.
Remember, these are the people who wallow in "the plight of the Palestinians", who voice support for Hamas and Hizb'Allah, and who never lose a chance to condemn Israel for faults real and imagined.
You just knew it would take Foxman five minutes to come out and make half the Jews in America cringe. He was probably ready with his call for a hate-crime probe before he finished breakfast.
Bill's right by the way. "In vino veritas" is silliness mmuch of the time. Yes sometimes after a few you say what you really think. But after way more than a few? When you're really gone? You may just be saying obnoxious things because you think they're funny. Or will start a fight, because you want a fight. Or will hurt, because you want them to hurt.
Come on. When Mel Gibson gets trashed, he doesn't lash out at the bicyclists, Barry Bonds, Dean Esmay, or even the Illuminati. Give it a break. He grabs the first thing on his unhinged mind and it's Hymie Weinstein!
Mel Gibson, if anything is a lush, drunken driver, and asshole. None of which equates to some sort of hate crime.
In any case, there probably isn't anyone left in the world who is exposed to the incessant news media chatter who doesn't know exactly what this fool did to himself late Thursday night or early morning, in Malabu, California.
First, he drove faster than 85 mph in a 45 mph zone.
Second, he did it while intoxicated from alcohol consumption, well beyond any levels established by the California department of motor vehicles.
Third, he made obnoxious statements about the Jews to the arresting officer; threatened to use his supposed influence with the local sheriff's department to take away the deputy's job; insulted a female deputy when we arrived in handcuffs at the police station; and got himself tossed into the station detox tank to sleep it all off.
Mel Gibson is just another famous entertainer. He enjoys his station in life almost purely as a result of having a large number of fans and connections with numerous aspects of the film production and distribution industry. Without all that, he would be just another drunken lout with what are self-evident deep-set prejudices against Jews and apparently against other subsets of modern american society.
I suspect that Mel Gibson has just damaged his image -- and therefore probably his career as well -- in a way that an entire office building filled with Abraham Foxmans could ever contrive to accomplish. And that's where the matter should be left to stand. For a guy who hates Jews, and homosexuals, too, as I understand, and independent women, for good measure, I would say that Mel picked the wrong industry to settle into. Chances are he will get absolution from the Inquisition or whatever gang runs that the latin-rite church of the mary folks that Mel is so attached to. But all he will get from the rest of Hollywood from now until forever will be electronic spitballs tossed at all his work.
Mel, if I were you and if I had fallen head first into a shitbucket of the depth, width and content that you did a few nights ago, I would think of changing my name and hiding.
Try "Marty Ginsberg" or something like that, and get a plastic surgeon to remake your face. He who hides best hides himself among his enemies. Or do whatever the Hollywood Commies did to outlast the blacklists of the early 1950s.
You know, if he'd torn into Samoans, everyone would be laughing right now. "Bastard Samoans! Starting wars. Trying to take over the NFL. You're not a Samoan, are you, Officer McDuff?"
Gibson's real problem isn't that he's an antisemite and a drunk. The problem is he's short.
I'm with you. While I certainly have been a critic of Gibson on some things, the ADL is full of it here. It was speech.
I also agree that I don't think it's fair to say that people are "more honest" when drunk though. That can be deceptive. Drunk people can be very sloppy about hiding things and stumble or be tricked into revealing things about themselves they normally wouldn't. But they also can make stuff up, grossly exagerrate things, and say thing purely because they think they are being crazy or just to BE an asshole. If Gibson felt like he thought everyone thought he was anti-semetic, and he actually wasn't (i have no idea if he is or not, though he certainly hangs around with the wrong crowd), then a drunk in that position could certainly go, oh yeah, you think I'm anti-semetic? I'll show you how anti-semetic I can be!
Casey, your perspective on Mel Gibson's drunk speeding incident is better than anything I've read to date, including my own comments.
The best way to handle this might be a permanent revocation of his driver's license, plus a 6-month prison term for 42 mph over the posted speed limit while intoxicated.
Then let's see how far his influence extends in LE departments all around greater Los Angeles.
I've never understood what people want to investigate when someone is reported to have said something awful.
Do they suspect that the reports are wrong? Or is "investigate" code for "haul his ass into court"?
Today's latest news is that ABC has dropped Mel Gibson's proposed series on the jewish holocaust in Europe in World War II. The move was apparently at the behest of the Disney organization that owns ABC.
The ostensible reason given by ABC was that Gibson's Icon Productions has been working on a series script for two years but has produced nothing to date. But Gibson's newly-acquired notoriety over his drunken antisemitic comments after being arrested for drunken high-speed driving obviosly has stuck to him like crazy glue.
I suspect that no matter what the future holds for his film-making career, the arrogant and occasionally Mel Gibson of the past will no longer be appropriate to this man's new and greatly shrunken image.
---
All this is beginning to remind me of a Hollywood film from the mid-1950s, "A Face in the Crowd", written by Budd Schulberg. The anti-hero of that film, played by Andy Griffith in one of his most unusual and hard-hitting screen roles, is one Dusty Rhodes, a hard-drinking and folksy-talking billyjoebob picked up one day on an Arkansas back road by a TV producer, played by Patricia Neal.
The producer makes the mistake of putting Dusty on a radio program, which he rapidly takes over, and from which he graduates first to Memphis television and thence to the big time in New York.
In his private life, Dusty is a monster carefully hidden from public view. But as his power in contemporary society builds up, his original TV producer and on/off girl friend determines to destroy him. This she does in his main broadcast studio, by holding the broadcast connection switches open while the hidden Dusty Rhodes opens his vicious mouth to the world.
So that's how I see Mel Gibson. A talented man who has been capable of hiding his innermost and apparently self. But a bottle of Tequila whose contents were already absorbed in his guts, a speeding car with a grossly drunken Mel at the wheel, and his arrest by a no-nonsense cop who takes meticulous and detailed arrest notes, has made Mel Gibson into the Dusty Rhodes of the early 21st century.
My memory erred. The character in Elia Kazan's 1956 film "A Face in the Crowd" was not Dusty Rhodes, but Lawrence 'Lonesome' Rhodes. I just googled up all this stuff after an absence of many decades, it reminded me that Dusty Rhodes is some sort of country/western entertainer, but that Lonesome Rhodes was Andy Griffiths strange and all but overpowering screen personality back 50 years ago.
My experience is that's a common misconception, but ultimately wrong. (IMHO) Drunkenness doesn't reveal character; it distorts it. Especially alcoholic drinking.
No, hate crimes are constitutional, but Gibson is not guilty of a hate crime. He didn't ACT upon his thoughts. Now, if he would have plowed into a synagogue with swastikas painted on his car, that's a different story. My personal belief is that we have to have a special place in the law set aside for crimes so heinous as to deter them in the future. After all, how many Timothy McVeighs have you seen pop up after Oklahoma City? (yes, I know his was not a "hate" crime.) How many people have been tied to a truck and dragged until dead due to race? Sure, racism and hate still exist, but there is a certain deterence that exists knowing that your little crime is going to be treated differently. At least that is my opinion, I could be wrong.
Remember, these are the people who wallow in "the plight of the Palestinians", who voice support for Hamas and Hizb'Allah, and who never lose a chance to condemn Israel for faults real and imagined.
(And Foxman has become a parody of an idiot.)
Then he will be feted for his "bravery."
Bill's right by the way. "In vino veritas" is silliness mmuch of the time. Yes sometimes after a few you say what you really think. But after way more than a few? When you're really gone? You may just be saying obnoxious things because you think they're funny. Or will start a fight, because you want a fight. Or will hurt, because you want them to hurt.
I really don't want to argue about this, but, maybe you've just never been crazy drunk and then woke up and been hideously embarrassed?
Here's how I tend to see it:
Level 1 inebriated: Heheh, I can't believe I did that.
Level 2 inebriated: God, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Level 3 inebriated: My God, you're kidding. Well it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
Level 4 and above: My God, please forgive me.
But that's me. You'll have your own experiences.
Dean and I agree. Write down the date :)
Not yet, anyway. Give them time.
Having been there once or twice in my life, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
In any case, there probably isn't anyone left in the world who is exposed to the incessant news media chatter who doesn't know exactly what this fool did to himself late Thursday night or early morning, in Malabu, California.
First, he drove faster than 85 mph in a 45 mph zone.
Second, he did it while intoxicated from alcohol consumption, well beyond any levels established by the California department of motor vehicles.
Third, he made obnoxious statements about the Jews to the arresting officer; threatened to use his supposed influence with the local sheriff's department to take away the deputy's job; insulted a female deputy when we arrived in handcuffs at the police station; and got himself tossed into the station detox tank to sleep it all off.
Mel Gibson is just another famous entertainer. He enjoys his station in life almost purely as a result of having a large number of fans and connections with numerous aspects of the film production and distribution industry. Without all that, he would be just another drunken lout with what are self-evident deep-set prejudices against Jews and apparently against other subsets of modern american society.
I suspect that Mel Gibson has just damaged his image -- and therefore probably his career as well -- in a way that an entire office building filled with Abraham Foxmans could ever contrive to accomplish. And that's where the matter should be left to stand. For a guy who hates Jews, and homosexuals, too, as I understand, and independent women, for good measure, I would say that Mel picked the wrong industry to settle into. Chances are he will get absolution from the Inquisition or whatever gang runs that the latin-rite church of the mary folks that Mel is so attached to. But all he will get from the rest of Hollywood from now until forever will be electronic spitballs tossed at all his work.
Mel, if I were you and if I had fallen head first into a shitbucket of the depth, width and content that you did a few nights ago, I would think of changing my name and hiding.
Try "Marty Ginsberg" or something like that, and get a plastic surgeon to remake your face. He who hides best hides himself among his enemies. Or do whatever the Hollywood Commies did to outlast the blacklists of the early 1950s.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Gibson's real problem isn't that he's an antisemite and a drunk. The problem is he's short.
Some people's priorities are seriously messed up...
I also agree that I don't think it's fair to say that people are "more honest" when drunk though. That can be deceptive. Drunk people can be very sloppy about hiding things and stumble or be tricked into revealing things about themselves they normally wouldn't. But they also can make stuff up, grossly exagerrate things, and say thing purely because they think they are being crazy or just to BE an asshole. If Gibson felt like he thought everyone thought he was anti-semetic, and he actually wasn't (i have no idea if he is or not, though he certainly hangs around with the wrong crowd), then a drunk in that position could certainly go, oh yeah, you think I'm anti-semetic? I'll show you how anti-semetic I can be!
The best way to handle this might be a permanent revocation of his driver's license, plus a 6-month prison term for 42 mph over the posted speed limit while intoxicated.
Then let's see how far his influence extends in LE departments all around greater Los Angeles.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Do they suspect that the reports are wrong? Or is "investigate" code for "haul his ass into court"?
The ostensible reason given by ABC was that Gibson's Icon Productions has been working on a series script for two years but has produced nothing to date. But Gibson's newly-acquired notoriety over his drunken antisemitic comments after being arrested for drunken high-speed driving obviosly has stuck to him like crazy glue.
I suspect that no matter what the future holds for his film-making career, the arrogant and occasionally Mel Gibson of the past will no longer be appropriate to this man's new and greatly shrunken image.
---
All this is beginning to remind me of a Hollywood film from the mid-1950s, "A Face in the Crowd", written by Budd Schulberg. The anti-hero of that film, played by Andy Griffith in one of his most unusual and hard-hitting screen roles, is one Dusty Rhodes, a hard-drinking and folksy-talking billyjoebob picked up one day on an Arkansas back road by a TV producer, played by Patricia Neal.
The producer makes the mistake of putting Dusty on a radio program, which he rapidly takes over, and from which he graduates first to Memphis television and thence to the big time in New York.
In his private life, Dusty is a monster carefully hidden from public view. But as his power in contemporary society builds up, his original TV producer and on/off girl friend determines to destroy him. This she does in his main broadcast studio, by holding the broadcast connection switches open while the hidden Dusty Rhodes opens his vicious mouth to the world.
So that's how I see Mel Gibson. A talented man who has been capable of hiding his innermost and apparently self. But a bottle of Tequila whose contents were already absorbed in his guts, a speeding car with a grossly drunken Mel at the wheel, and his arrest by a no-nonsense cop who takes meticulous and detailed arrest notes, has made Mel Gibson into the Dusty Rhodes of the early 21st century.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI