"That stuff is booze talking," the deputy said. "There's two things that booze does. It amplifies your basic personality. If you are a laid-back kind of person, just an easygoing kind of person, booze is going to amplify that and you'll be just sitting around going how it's a wonderful day.
"But, if you are a high-strung person, it's going to amplify that, and all the bad things are going to come out."
The thing is, alcohol is a depressant, in that it lowers a person's inhibitions. Alcohol doesn't make you say "things that I do not believe and which are despicable"--it makes you say despicable beliefs that you would otherwise keep to yourself. Honestly, people, how many drunken midnight confessions of unrequited love do we have to suffer through before accepting this as a Universal Truth? As a Catholic, I find Gibson's equivocation on the matter particularly annoying: He can't have it both ways. Gibson references the Vatican and papal condemnations of anti-Semitism as a defense:
"To be anti-Semitic is a sin," he said. "It's been condemned by one Papal Council after another. To be anti-Semitic is to be un-Christian, and I'm not."
But at the same time, Gibson refuses to repudiate his father, the notoriously anti-Semitic Hutton Gibson:
Like his father Hutton Gibson, Mel Gibson follows an ultra-traditionalist branch of Catholicism that still conducts Latin Masses and rejects almost all the modern teachings of the church.
Hutton Gibson is a Sedevacantist, a Catholic breakaway sect which even rejects the legitimacy of the modern popes.
Theologians say it's a belief system underpinned by anti-Semitism and it could have fuelled Mel Gibson's outburst.
So then... Mel still stands behind his father and church, which doesn't recognize the legitamacy of the papacy. Mel, here's a hint: if you're Sedevantantist, quoting the pope and papal councils as your defense against charges of anti-Semitism doesn't hold much water. You're full of mealy-mouthed weasle words and too chickenshit to own up to what you really are. One thing's for sure--if Gibson actually were Roman Catholic, he'd be due for an excommunication right about now.
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Thanks, Michael. But it pisses me off to have to write it. Pisses me off a whole hell of a lot, and for a hell of a lot of different reasons, including the obvious ones.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think I was one of seven people actually looking forward to "Apocalypto." Sheesh...
Why should Mel Gibson have to repudiate his father? My father may believe all sorts of ridiculous things, but they have nothing to do with me.
ReplyDeleteRepudiate his father's beliefs, pj. Gibson was raised in his father's extremist church, and contributes money toward its continued function. That would lead one to rationally conclude that Mel shares very similar beliefs.
ReplyDeleteIt's like saying, "My dad's a Klansman, but that doesn't make me a racist. The only reason I take his white robes to the dry cleaners and buy his kerosene for his cross-burnings is because the Bible tells me I must honor my father. Which is why I drove him over to the Dark Side of Town last night and waited while he finished up with his lynching. But I'm not a racist."