In all seriousness, I saw part one of the Good Morning America interview, and Gibson did not come off well. He seemed self absorbed. He tried to make lame self-effacing jokes but they didn't sound sincere, and he just looked sort of manic. Plus, he referred to his alcoholism in the second person, which someone should have warned him not to do. It makes him sound like he's still in denial. When he didn't want to answer a question he opened his eyes wide and stared at Diane Sawyer, as if to say "don't go there."
Tomorrow, in part two, they're supposed to get into the anti-semitic stuff more. I doubt Gibson will perform any better. He totally copped out when Sawyer asked him why he said what he said. He blamed it on the alcohol, but that doesn't explain how tequila can turn a non-bigot into a bigot.
1
on the other hand, Once at a college party I got so drunk I flipped over a table and started jumping on sofa's yelling "I'm Conan the Barbarian"!
Posted by: kyle8 at October 13, 2006 03:05 AM (74bHD)
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I support mel, i believe it was a weird mix of alcohol and something, oddly, spiritual. i forgive the dude
Posted by: Scof at October 13, 2006 03:12 AM (nzCS0)
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I'm pretty much with John Derbyshire on this. I have long believed that we're all bigots, to at least some small degree. I think there's something innate in human beings that fears/dislikes the "other." I think human history bears out this theory quite nicely. And if you look around the world, there's still a hell of a lot of that going on. Happily, most of us -- in this country, at least -- choose to suppress that "something," whatever it is, through reason. Alcohol inhibits reason.
But few of us are willing to admit our innate bigotry, even to ourselves. And we -- hypocrites that we are -- certainly don't accept it in others. So Mel can't come out and say openly that maybe on some level he has a little problem with Jews, but rationally he knows it's crazy and wrong and he puts it out of his mind except -- oops -- maybe sometimes we he gets a little drunk.
Makes it pretty tough to give a satisfactory answer.
Posted by: Matt at October 13, 2006 09:02 AM (10G2T)
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I think Mel is probably anti-semitic, just because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And he seems to have such a hard time denying it.
The easiest thing to say would have been, "hey I was angry that I got arrested and I wanted to insult the cop for revenge. I saw that he had a Jewish last name so I started going off on him, just to piss him off. I didn't mean any of that, I was just being an asshole."
Mel almost had it when he said we all say things we don't mean when we're drunk, like we might tell a loved one we hate them or we want to kill them. He was on the right track with that, but them Mel said he didn't know the cop was Jewish. Now that doesn't make any sense to me. If he didn't know the guy was Jewish when he said those things (despite the name badge all cops wear), that excuse doesn't work.
Posted by: annika at October 14, 2006 09:27 AM (qQD4Q)
