Demon alcohol dooms Gibson to public relations purgatory
By Beth Teitell
Boston Herald Columnist
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
I know everyone’s coming down really hard on Mel Gibson for the anti-Semitic and obscene tirade he unleashed following his arrest for drunken driving in Malibu, but give the man a break. You read his post-slur-negation statement: He totally disagrees with what he said: ‘‘I acted like a person completely out of control,” the Good Gibson explained, ‘‘and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable.”
That’s the real Mel Gibson talking. The Mel Gibson authorized to speak for Mel Gibson, not the rogue Mel Gibson going around ruining Mel Gibson’s reputation.
And now - how unfair is this? - the Hollywood powers are debating whether Mel Gibson has a future in Tinseltown. Which means Mel Gibson is as much a victim of Mel Gibson as are a female sergeant at the police station (‘‘sugar tits” in Gibson’s parlance) and the Jewish people (the ones ‘‘responsible for all the wars in the world”).
The guy was drunk, for goodness sake. Jeez, isn’t anyone familiar with the cliche: in vino un-veritas (in wine, untruth)? It’s not that the alcohol made him feel free to say what he really thinks, but rather that the evil booze implanted totally foreign thoughts into his head. A variation on this kind of mix-up happens all the time to celebrities - think of all the times someone snuck a banned substance into a baseball player’s body, or highly classified documents jumped into an official’s pants (that happened to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger).
Heck, it even happens to regular civilians. You can be going through your day determined to remain on your diet, when before you know it, you detect something sweet and buttery in your mouth. How it got in there you have no idea.
Don’t you just hate you when you do that? I’ll bet that’s how Mel feels, too - or will, if moviegoers put their money where his mouth is.
