VILE AND PATHETIC

Image provided courtesy of Mike Thomas of Encyclopedia of British Dance Bands

A few days ago I read Mel Gibson’s statement (of apology? explanation?) after his arrest for driving drunk, and the reportedly anti-Semitic comments (though comments is probably far too civilised a word for such sayings) he made to the arresting officer. About what he said when he was arrested, I shall say nothing. You probably have read it too. It is beneath contempt and doesn’t deserve any form of debate.

That statement which was released a few days later, though, bears looking at in detail because it is a sad, sad document. It was released through his publicist and the first question one asks is whether he wrote it or whether his publicists cobbled it together. It certainly seems the work of someone who is not comfortable with language as a means of communication and who feels that you can strengthen any argument by throwing in as many syllables as possible and that you should never use one word when seventeen will do. Well, there’s a lot of it about in west-coast movie circles. But let’s look at one or two things especially.

I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing. It’s almost as though he doesn’t want to let the sentence end, so he says it in that verbose, inflated way. Incidentally, matey, you can’t have a one-on-one meeting with a group of people. One-on-one equals two. But exactly how will you be doing all that path-discerning? Did you have anything in mind or did it just sound good when you wrote the statement? And how will you know when the path is appropriate? Would you recognise an inappropriate path when you see one? I’m not really up in discerning paths, so I’d be very curious to know how it is done.

Let’s look at what comes next. I have begun an ongoing programme of recovery and what I am now realising is that I cannot do it alone. He’s carrying on as though he were a victim. He isn’t. The people who had to listen to him that night were the victims. So, you’re in an “ongoing programme” of recovery. Tell us: how long did you think that you could do it alone? What made you realise you cannot? And when? Yesterday? Last week? Three months ago from last Tuesday?

I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from… They came from you, sunshine, nowhere else! You were not a ventriloquist’s dummy with someone else (presumably an anti-Semite) working you. Alcohol can make a person belligerent, tired, euphoric, even violent. But can it turn a person into an anti-Semite? Or does alcohol simply make a person less guarded about his inner feelings?

The whole of this statement, when you hack you way through the awkward psychobabble, is designed to make him out to be an unwilling victim of something that suddenly enveloped him when he was arrested, that is not part of his personality make-up. Anti-Semitism isn’t something that just descends upon you out of the blue when you least expect it, and vanishes with the dawn. It is a set of twisted values and judgements that a person arrives at himself, and in order for you to let it out - in a drunken rage for example - it has to be in you in the first place. Apologise by all means – it is the only right thing to do. Atone, make restitution. But to try to join hands with your victims and make out that you and they have suffered equally by your actions – that’s just pathetic.