The Dish

"Mel Gibson might be my favorite feminist. If he’s not number one on my list, he’s pretty close, in competition with Pope John Paul II… In a day when "Take Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries" is an often-heard chorus in mainstream abortion debates, Mel Gibson’s understanding of women and his articulation of their unique mission could have remarkable repercussions. This new ‚Äî or old, inasmuch as it is natural and commonsensical ‚Äî kind of feminism, a focus on the different contributions of men and women and the different ways they live their missions, should make us all rethink how we live and love," – Kathryn-Jean Lopez, National Revew Online, not so long ago.

"What do you think you’re looking at, sugar tits?" – Mel Gibson to a female police officer last Friday.

The diversionary tactics being deployed by the theocon right (and fellow-travelers) in defense of their cultural icon, Mel Gibson, are getting quite inventive. Here’s David Frum, who uses the occasion to suggest Gibson’s anti-Semitism qualifies him to become head of the U.N. Can you imagine him taking such a jocular approach if, say, Louis Farakhan had been ranting similar things about Jews?

Here’s Captain Quarter’s blog who summons up his greatest outrage for Abraham Foxman:

Foxman had our support while he expressed outrage and disgust at Gibson’s drunken rant. However, he loses it when he advocates criminal penalties for merely offering an opinion. Gibson’s remarks, as reported, were hateful and obnoxious – but Foxman’s are truly dangerous.

You’ll find no more passionate opponent of hate crime laws than me. But Foxman’s idiocy is more dangerous than spreading medieval anti-Semitism through the Middle East in the midst of a global terrorist movement to eradicate the Jewish people and state? Please. This right-wing blog, on the other hand, blames … Hollywood:

I am sickened by Mel Gibson’s behavior, but I am certainly not surprised. Hollywood is Hollywood after all.

Another rightist manages to bring Ted Kennedy into the entire mess:

The thing is that [Gibson] has owned up to his mistake. Unlike a Ted Kennedy or others in his blood line that have been in the news lately.

Still, Jay Nordlinger’s apology for Gibson is the real beaut. I reprint part of it here:

The second story ‚Äî or the second version of this common story ‚Äî comes from my friend Ben. He lives in Israel, but went to college in Michigan. One night, his roommate got ripped, and accosted Ben with ‘f***ing Jew.’ (Unlike Mike, Ben really is a Jew.) As Ben tells it, relations with his roommate were always better after that. Go figure. Something about openness.
So, is there veritas in vino? Is alcohol a truth serum? Probably so ‚Äî but you don’t necessarily want to know the truth. Then again, you may.
In any case, I was thinking someone could market a wine or a vodka or something, naming it ‘F***ing Jew.’ A few swigs, and out come the words.

How many friends do you have who, after around three drinks immediately and without warning blurts out that the "Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world"? I guess I run in different circles than others.

This is a regional war:

"Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire," al-Sistani said in a clear reference to the United States. "It is not possible to stand helpless in front of this Israeli aggression on Lebanon," he added. "If an immediate cease-fire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed, dire consequences will befall the region."

Maybe even Moulitsas will have to have an opinion now.

"Back in March, The New York Times did a vicious and despicable article in which they tried to use guilt by association of the lowest kind to try to say that some fairly kooky ideas that Mel’s father may hold were somehow associated with Mel, and therefore, this movie was part of a grand conspiracy. And it almost looked like a set-up job. Mel is being attacked – and this is laughable – even in a recent article in "The New York Times," he’s being attacked because he’s a charitable guy who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to build a church. I don’t see what’s wrong with that … The point is, Jews have real enemies. Americans have real enemies. I mean, there are people out there who mean us harm. Mel Gibson isn’t one of them," Jewish conservative Michael Medved, on CNN August 4, 2003.

Fareed makes a good point:

"[If I were running against conservatives,] I would make up a campaign commercial almost entirely of Donald Rumsfeld’s press conferences, because the man is looking — I mean, it’s not just that he seems like a bad Secretary of [Defense]. He seems literally in a parallel universe and slightly deranged. If you listen to what he said last week about Iraq, he’s living in a different world, not a different country."

Too bad the Dems are too clueless to take his advice.

(Photo: Brendan Miaslowsi/AFP/Getty.)

This is a translation of a letter to the editor in the German leftwing daily, Die Tageszeitung. It’s from a Lebanese Shiite, explaining Hezbollah’s evil strategy:

I lived until 2002 in a small southern village near Mardshajund that is inhabited by a majority of Shias like me. After Israel left Lebanon, it did not take long for Hezbollah to take have its say in other towns. Received as successful resistance fighters and armed to the teeth, they stored rockets in bunkers in our town as well. The social work of the Party of God consisted in building a school and a residence over these bunkers! A local sheikh explained to me laughing that the Jews would lose in any event because the rockets would either be fired at them or if they attacked the rockets depots, they would be condemned by world opinion on account of the dead civilians. These people do not care about the Lebanese population, they use them as shields, and, once dead, as propaganda. As long as they continue existing there, there will be no tranquility and peace.

Let’s hope an international force can get there soon.

Los Angeles, California, noon.

Among those with the integrity to see bigotry when it stares him in the face, neoconservative lion, Charles Krauthammer, also deserves props for calling Gibson what he is two years ago. Money quote:

In none of the Gospels does the high priest Caiaphas stand there with his cruel, impassive fellow priests witnessing the scourging. In Gibson’s movie they do. When it comes to the Jews, Gibson deviates from the Gospels — glorying in his artistic vision — time and again. He bends, he stretches, he makes stuff up. And these deviations point overwhelmingly in a single direction — to the villainy and culpability of the Jews.

The most subtle, and most revolting, of these has to my knowledge not been commented upon. In Gibson’s movie, Satan appears four times. Not one of these appearances occurs in the four Gospels. They are pure invention. Twice, this sinister, hooded, androgynous embodiment of evil is found . . . where? Moving among the crowd of Jews. Gibson’s camera follows close up, documentary style, as Satan glides among them, his face popping up among theirs — merging with, indeed, defining the murderous Jewish crowd. After all, a perfect match: Satan’s own people.

And we are now surprised??

A classic column, and worth re-reading in light of recent revelations. Money quote:

Apparently seeking to curry favor, Gibson announced a few weeks ago that he had cut the scene where a Jewish mob yells for the blood of Jesus to descend on the heads of its children (a scene that occurs in only one of the four contradictory Gospels). Gibson lied. The scene is still there, spoken in Aramaic. Only the English subtitle has been removed. Propagandists in other countries will be able to subtitle it any way they like. This is all of a piece with the general moral squalor of his project. Gibson’s producer lied when he said that a pope Gibson despises had endorsed the film. He would not show the movie to anyone who might object in advance. He will not debate any of his critics, and he relies on star-stricken pulp interviewers to feed him soft questions. Now, as the dollars begin to flow from this front-loaded fruit-machine of cynical publicity, he is sobbing about the risks and sacrifices he has made for the Lord. A coward, a bully, a bigmouth, and a queer-basher. Yes, we have been here before. The word is fascism, in case you are wondering, and we don’t have to sit through that movie again.

Props to Power Line’s Scott Hinderaker Johnson for breaking with the Popular Front two years ago and finding "The Passion of the Christ" an anti-Semitic movie when he first saw it. Gibson is a virulent anti-Semite, attracted to insane and gratuitous violence. He is Father Coughlin remade for the 21st Century. But Hinderaker’s best point is one reason this story is still important today – and more important than the MSM has understood. Money quote:

I found myself wondering how this movie would be seen by Arabs and Muslims – the kind of Arabs and Muslims that surround Israel. I think Gibson’s film is crude in ways that would make it popular viewing on Arab television outlets that otherwise specialize in 45-part serializations of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Where am I wrong?

He was not wrong, and that, in part, was the obvious effect of the movie: to revive ancient anti-Semitism, to foment it in the Middle East and to endanger Israel even more. For one of the most repulsive defenses of the movie – that its critics were fomenting anti-Semitism more than Gibson – read this National Review essay by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. This movie was an enormous cultural event and it came from the mind and soul of a vicious anti-Semite, at a time when Israel’s existence is on the line. And yet many Jewish neocons went out of their way to defend it, for the purposes of their alliance of convenience with the Christianist right. Here’s another priceless quote from Lapin:

Surely it is now time to analyze the vitriolic loathing demonstrated by various Jewish groups and their leaders toward Mel Gibson over the past six months. This analysis might help forestall some similar ill-conceived and ill-fated future misadventure on the part of self-anointed Jewish leadership. At the very least it might advance human understanding of destructive group pathologies.

As the whole world knows by now, Mel Gibson, his movie, his father, his church and anything else even remotely associated with Mr. Gibson have been smeared as anti-Semitic. From the immoderate assaults, you might have thought that the target was a thug with a lengthy rap sheet for murdering Jews while yelling "Heil Hitler." From the intensity of the rhetoric you would have thought that from his youth, Gibson had been hurling bricks through synagogue windows. Yet until "The Passion," he was a highly regarded and successful entertainer who went about his business largely ignored by the Jewish community, so why now do they hate him so?

Once Mel Gibson revealed himself to be, like the President, a person of serious religious faith the gloves came off. Mel Gibson has done a major favor for serious faith, both Jewish and Christian, in America. He has made it ‘cool’ to be religious, but in so doing he has unleashed the hatred of secular America against himself personally, against his work, and against his family. God bless him.