The Dish

The Los Angeles Times asks the right questions. Money quote:

"All that stuff about favorable treatment is something that needs to be looked at," said Mike Gennaco, who heads the Office of Independent Review, which investigates allegations of officer misconduct and monitors the department.

"I’d like to see if there was a legitimate law enforcement reason for asking that the report be altered," Gennaco said. He said his investigation will be wide-reaching, looking at Gibson’s ties to the department. In the past, Gibson has actively participated in a charity created by Sheriff Lee Baca…

Gibson has had a close relationship with the Sheriff’s Department. He served in 2002 as a "celebrity representative" for the L.A. Sheriff’s Department’s Star Organization, a group that provides scholarships and aid for the children of slain sheriff’s deputies.

A poll on the Christianist website, WorldNetDaily.

Stephen Pollard notices that the BBC, Reuters, and Sky News in Britain have not reported the content of Mel Gibson’s "despicable" remarks about Jews. I cannot find a reference in the Guardian/Observer either. I guess exposing anti-Semitism would be off-message given the British media’s coverage of the Iran-Israel war in Lebanon.

Update: CNN and the AP also airbrush out the content of Gibson’s dranged anti-Semitic rants. If this were just another celebrity skirmish, that would be fine. But this man created one of the biggest-selling movies of all time, marketed it in the Middle East, where Jews are ddeply vulnerable, and was accused of having anti-Semitic motives in reviving a medieval anti-Semitic genre. The Christianist right embraced Gibson and exonerated him from all suspicion of anti-Semitism. Now we have almost surreally graphic evidence of the mindset behind the director of "The Passion of the Christ." And the MSM censor it. Once again, the blogopshere is providing far more information than the mainstream. Thank God for Drudge.

Derby, Kansas, 4.30 pm.

The long hard slog to rescue American Christianity from the politicization of Christianism seems to be gaining ground. This story from the NYT this morning about pastor Gregory A. Boyd is a must-read. He’s not a member of the religious left. He’s a Christian, interested in serving others and exhibiting the humility and detachment from worldy power that Jesus exemplified. Nothing could be more alien to the religious right, whose pursuit of power and arrogant fundamentalist certainty have begun to tarnish the teachings of Jesus in the eyes of many. Read the whole thing, but here are a couple of beautiful qotes that sum up our predicament perfectly:

"When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses. When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross."

Tell that to Karl Rove, who sees religious faith as a tool to manipulate for political ends. Here’s another dissent:

"There is a lot of discontent brewing," said Brian D. McLaren, the founding pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and a leader in the evangelical movement known as the ’emerging church,’ which is at the forefront of challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment.

"More and more people are saying this has gone too far ‚Äî the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right," Mr. McLaren said. "You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can‚Äôt say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people. Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’"

And we all know those are the centerpieces of Jesus’ message: a peace-seeker who never mentioned homosexuality and believed in separating God from Caesar. That’s why I use the term "Christianist" to describe the Republican operatives fusing their ideology with the Gospels. Whatever else it is, their ideology is not synonymous with Christianity. Three words: vive la resistance.

Not very. A reader comments:

I just thought I would also observe that according to the Fox New story in your link:

"A breath test indicated Gibson’s blood-alcohol level was 0.12 percent, Whitmore said. The legal limit in California is 0.08 percent."

0.12 is certainly over the line for impaired driving skills, but it is not so very high that Mel would be ‘speaking in tongues,’ with no connection between his statements and his own internal thought process. At that level of intoxication he simply would be a little freer of social inhibitions, and I suspect that his statements would reliably reflect his thought processes, perhaps even especially so.
The only thing with which I disagree with you is that his career will be over.  One highly publicized week in a rehab clinic, a Larry King interview, and he‚Äôll be back, bigger than before, with his Christianist fans more in love with their hero than ever.  There really is no such thing as bad publicity in the 21st Century.

I wonder whether Christianism as a movement can tolerate a drunk, rabid anti-Semite as one of its cultural icons? We’ll see.

Here’s Kathryn Jean Lopez criticizing someone or other:

It must be helpful to have your own t-word that works to dismiss anything folks you sometimes (or often) disagree with say.
Meanwhile, one can deeply deplore the anti-Semitic reflex and still know one of his movies was a worthwhile — even important — contribution.

I think she must be referring to my recent post. I use the word "theocon" to describe a group of Catholic conservative intellectuals who believe that Thomistic natural law should be our guide to public policy, and that there should be as little separation of civil law from religious law as possible. I know Gibson and his movie are not the same thing. But surely this revelation tells us something about the possible motivations behind someone reviving a medieval anti-Semitic art-form. I wonder, in particular, what Michael Medved is feeling right now. Here’s Medved not so long ago, assuring us that anti-Semitism was the last thing motivating Gibson:

Certainly, Gibson’s account of the story ‚Äî in which the Judean priests and the Judean mob force Pilate’s hand in ordering the death of Christ ‚Äî falls well within the Christian mainstream and corresponds to numerous references in the Gospels. Gibson’s critics may resent these elements of the drama, but they must blame Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John rather than Mel.

So the Gospels are anti-Semitic but Gibson is not? He continues:

The film seemed to me so obviously free of anti-Semitic intent that I urged Gibson to show the rough cut to some of his Jewish critics as a means of reassuring them… In more than a half dozen conversations with Gibson, I heard him express his passionate desire to avoid hurting the Jewish community or its members… Concerning the issue of blaming contemporary Jews for the crucifixion of Christ, Gibson has made clear in private conversation and in several on-the-record public statements that his personal thinking is far more closely aligned with contemporary church teaching than with the older doctrine that led to so much persecution of European Jewish communities.

How sadly eager Medved was to believe Gibson’s pledges of non-bigotry.

An Israeli pilot manages to fly and land an F-15 after losing one of its wings. I have a feeling his country is going to need soldiers like him in the coming days and months.

A reader writes:

Shut up Sodomite. Gibson got drunk and said some vile things. Big deal. Marlon Brando called Jews kikes on National TV, Larry King show. and survived, Gibson will too. All the anti-Christian crap that comes out of Hollywood is much worse than anything Gibson said. And yes, Jews do run Hollywood. I’m making no excuses for anything Gibson said. Just pointing out the hypocrisy. Gibson has apologized and needs to get help for his drinking problem. You on the other hand are still the laughing stock of the blogosphere.

… and apologizes. Money quote:

"Gibson also apologized for what he said were "despicable" statements he made to the deputies who arrested him early Friday morning on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. "I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested,"he said in a statement issued by his publicist. "I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry. I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse."

So the question now is: how many drunks immediately start ranting about Jews when they are arrested for DUI? What conceivable relevance does the statement

"F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

have to do with anything? The only rational inference is that Gibson is an extreme anti-Semite, as his porn movie demonstrated, and as his refusal to disown his own father’s deranged anti-Semitism proved.