One does not use antisemitic slurs, drunk or sober without antisemitic ideas.
I've got an audio recording of my dumb drunk ass claiming I was gonna sprout wings and touch the sun like Icarus didn't. That don't mean I think I'm a bird.
Did you read the article? I did. For several years Mel Gibson has been blacklisted. For those same years he's been rehabilitating himself. The man goes to Jewish holiday celebrations. And then he doesn't talk about it, or really anything, in public. In spite of the great strides he's made at improving himself and his worldview, he has not tried to commercialize them. The link in OP is to an article written nearly two years ago, but this is the first I've heard of it (incidentally, reddit traffic has made this story the top trending story on Deadline...22 months after it was penned).
If we can take Weiner at her word, it seems like Gibson has done everything right in the aftermath of his fall. Seven years sober, so nearly nine now. He took steps to correct himself. He lost his wife of 26 years- she left the day after his DUI arrest with their seven children.
I think Mel is conscious that he brought shame to his name and family. People are calling for him to not be forgiven unless he publicly shames and repudiates his father. And why? The public and media did not demand this before Mel's scandalous and criminal behavior. To wash away his sins, they demand that he point out his father's much more grievous violence against human decency. And why? If Mel can show by word and deed and consistency that he has reformed, then he has reformed.
To make it personal again, I've had and dealt with (to varying effectiveness) a drinking problem for fourteen years. Nearly half my life. I do not know all the things I've said but I am certain that many are terrible. Certainly I have threatened and assaulted people. Hypothetically, say I melted down in public so now people know the worst things that could possibly come from my mouth, and for some reason I said vicious things about gay folks, maybe because people around me were talking about Drag Race and I hate when people say "hashtag" out loud. In spite of not hating gay people (some of my best friends and roommates and ex-girlfriends are gay, I have officiated a same-sex wedding and would happily do so again if asked) it would sure sound like I hated them if you could hear my voice saying the words. My dad is super homophobic, so as part of forgiving me everyone demanded that I take out full page ads in the local paper talking about what an ass the old man is, or at least talk about it on national television. Now, since I believe that you should not bring shame or dishonor on your family, I would be forced to choose between higher public opinion of me at the cost of disparaging my family and lower public opinion of me at the cost of my voice and art, my dignity, and being wrongfully called a bigot.
Mel Gibson has already shamed himself and basically ruined his life as he knew it. We can't expect Mel to shame his father in order to come back into the public light, because Mel's shame isn't about his father's profoundly ugly mark on historical/societal discourse. It's about Mel and what he said and did. We do penance for our own sins, not for Adam's.
Mel Gibson has six sons and one daughter. If they were to enter the public eye, would we demand they condemn their father and grandfather? Or do they get a pass until the first time they get hate-drunk in public?
As an actor, Mel Gibson had some great roles. I'm not a huge fan of his directorial chops and I think his choices as regards cinematography and ahistoricity are pretty big errors. As a lover of film, it does not matter to me if Mel Gibson works in the industry again. As a person who is trying to love other people, I think Mel has done his time. The only thing he owes the world is to try and be kind.
The motherfucker doesn't have to get life in career purgatory just because he won't send his father down the river as part of a plea bargain. Mel Gibson doesn't blame his father for Mel's drunken voice. I don't think we should be blaming Hutton either (for Mel's scandals. Hutton is obviously a horrible person on his own and deserves the blame for being unrepentantly brimful of hate).
To me, bringing other people down with you as you fall is one of the lowest forms of cowardice. My crimes and mistakes are my own, and if you want to bring me into a court I don't expect to answer for the things my father has done. I certainly don't expect to walk free after throwing the rotten old bastard to the circling wolves and if you told me I could it'd make me sick to even consider it. A man doesn't let other people take the blame when he is the one at fault.
If people want to know what Mel Gibson thinks about the Holocaust or the Third Reich, they should ask him what he thinks. Not what he thinks about what his father has said and written. Incidentally, when people do ask Mel Gibson what he thinks about the Shoah or the Nazi state, he gives answers like pretty much any normal person would. From the article:
Similar to what he told Sawyer, Gibson told me that he believed that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. “Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenseless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do; absolutely,” he told Sawyer. “It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.”
What do people want Mel Gibson to say? Because whatever it is, it should be about Mel and his relationship with the world at large, not about his father.
The facts are that Mel is the reason why Mel is blacklisted.
I think the verb tense isn't quite right here. Mel is the reason he was blacklisted. But he is blacklisted still as if the past years had not happened at all, and people still praise Roman Polanski who is clearly a worse person (though a better artist by far).
Are the things Mel did in 2006 and 2009 that far beyond the pale, in an industry that gives awards to the rapist of a thirteen year old girl?