Posted on 08/05/2006 7:13:19 PM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
by Mark Finkelstein
August 5, 2006 - 21:57
Neal Gabler might not look like an athlete, but don't be surprised to see him lining up for the long jump at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. For on this evening's Fox News Watch, Neal took a leap of logic of Beamonesque proportions.
According to Gabler, the fact that a drunken Gibson made anti-Semitic remarks retroactively proves that his 'Passion of the Christ' was anti-Semitic too.
Here's how the liberal media critic put it:
"The interest here is 'The Passion.' It made something like $400 million. It was accused of being anti-Semitic. The mainstream press didn't really want to touch it. Because they were afraid of being clobbered from the right. Now Mel Gibson has outed himself. And it gives the mainstream press an opportunity - not just to focus on the fact that Mel Gibson was drunk and said anti-Semitic remarks - but that The Passion itself was anti-Semitic. That Mel Gibson has a pattern of anti-Semitism. And that's what makes it a story."
Or at least, a story line that Gabler devoutly hopes the MSM will pursue.
Nobody's perfect.
I prefer to think of Neal Gabler as a cartoon character, who plays the same role as a bad guy in professional wrestling, or Yosemite Sam.
Except that Yosemite Sam is lovable.
By the way, my favorite Passion film is Ben Hur, starring Ramon Navarro (1925).
Typical lefty - always fighting last year's battle - another compelling reason for not letting them get control of the government......
And for FReepers, to be discussed for all eternity and any excuse will do.
Meanwhile, Gabler's kids were overheard saying:
We can pick our noses, too bad we couldn't pick our dad.
I notice that the MSM makes much about Mel's untimely comments.
They call him anti-semitic, but they don't talk about what he actually said, and the circumstances it was said in.
The cop who pulled him over was Jewish.
I imagine had the cop been black, Mr. Gibson might have made some anti-negro remarks. Alcohol has a way of making you brave, uninhibited, and stupid, all at once.
Although we humans usually have our prejudices well hidden, different things can make them come out.
What Mel said was something that he would likely never say if not drunk, and I imagine he was attacking the cop personally because the cop was attacking him personally by pulling him over and arresting him for DUI.
Now, I have not see this particular reporter write a column declaring the nutjob in Iran an anti-semitic, even though that person said that Israelites must be removed from the face of the earth.
And I haven't seen that reporter write any columns about how well the IDF is doing against the Hezb'allah, or how great Coalition forces are doing against the terrorists.
And he should. Going by the name I would say the reporter is Jewish.
Gibson's only problem is a poor choice of friends, who would allow him to drive drunk, and perhaps the early stages of simple, banal and garden variety alcoholism, which far from the plain myth of bringing out "the truth about what a person believes," almost always, when confronted, aims outward for excuses for personal irresponsibility.
The shame of it is that fact that Gabler, liberal Banshee that he is, has to his credit a really interesting and scholarly book about the role of entertainment and the cult of celebrity that I am now reading for the second time. I would still highly recommend Life: The Movie, How Entertainment Conquered Reality as a wonderful American history of the Cult of the Celebrity and how Entertainment has become "the coin of the realm."
If only he could keep his ill-informed ideas about the behavior of alcoholics and potential alcoholics as much to himself as he managed to lighten his rare cheap shots at Conservatives in that great book!
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