Thursday Thirteen Ed. #52
by Steve, August 2nd, 2006
I am not known for my celebrity dish. I pretty much don’t give a rip about famous people. But since Mel “Watch me, I’m a train wreck” Gibson went and followed up his anti-semitic Passion play with a drunken Jew-hating tirade, I just can’t resist. After letting the Jewish community stew over the weekend on his non-apology, Mel’s publicist released a statement that owned up to the anti-semitism while maintaining that Mel is not really anti-semitic—maybe he just plays one in real life?—and asks the Jewish community to help him make it all better. That, my friends, is chutzpah!
The Jewish community was generally warm to the apology. But Monsters and Critics reports “Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center…cautioned in a statement that, like substance abuse and alcoholism, anti-Semitism ‘cannot be cured in one day and certainly not through a press release.'”
You could read Mel’s mealy-mouthed apology, or you could read my translation here (patience, TTers, by TT list follows):
