Mel Gibson’s Crazy-Go-Round

14 Jul, 2010 by John Hawkins

Print this article Font size -16+

It’s not exactly a secret that Mel Gibson’s a little loopy. After all, when you get stopped by the police, go on an anti-Semitic tirade, and refer to a female cop as “sugar tits,” it doesn’t exactly give people the impression that you handle stress well. This was all blamed on alcoholism, which, even if it were true, wouldn’t have been an adequate excuse for his behavior .

That brings us to his latest taped rants, made by his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, which make his former outburst sound like an Oxford debate. The tapes originally made news because of Gibson’s use of a racial slur, “You look like a f***ing pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n***ers, it will be your fault.”

Initially, after hearing about how all of this broke down, it was easy to have almost a perverse sort of sympathy for Gibson. Yes, he was absolutely wrong to say what he said, but, does anyone think Grigorieva didn’t know Gibson talked like that while they were in a relationship? Of course, she did. Moreover, it seems loathsome to release secretly recorded tapes of your ex-boyfriend. What sort of person does that?

I’ll tell you what sort of person does that: someone who doesn’t want to end up like Nicole Simpson. A new tape Grigorieva released takes the situation to a whole new level. Gibson’s not just upset, ranting, and racist; he’s murderously angry, completely out-of-control, and genuinely sounds capable of killing her.

In the latest audio, Gibson screams, is completely irrational, admits to punching Grigorieva in the mouth while she was holding a baby, threatens her openly, and makes reference to putting her in the “rose garden,” which I took to mean, he would kill her and then bury her body there. At times, Gibson literally gets so angry that he can’t talk and just pants like a dog. It’s frightening and so over-the-top that Gibson could win an award for the performance if he were playing an abusive boyfriend in a movie.

So, since that’s the case, I think Grigorieva did the right thing by releasing it. If she hadn’t, she might be dead. Now, Gibson knows without a shadow of a doubt if anything happens to her, people are going to immediately take a hard look at him. This may sound like hyperbole, but that may be the difference between Grigorieva staying alive and ending up in a morgue. PS: Oksana, get a gun and learn how to use it.

Last but not least, there’s been a lot of talk about whether these tapes will end Gibson’s career. Honest answer: probably not. Roman Polanski raped a teenage girl and Hollywood has supported him all the way. So, you think they’re going to toss Gibson under the bus? Oh, but Gibson dropped the n-bomb and we know how racially sensitive Hollywood is — yeah, right! Whoopi Goldberg has already come out and said Gibson isn’t racist and let’s face it: there are a lot more powerful Jews than blacks in Hollywood and if they shrugged off his anti-Semitic rant, do you think this is going to be too far over the line for them? As long as he has money and can draw an audience, Gibson will be able to keep making movies.

Ah, but there’s his downfall, right? Surely, the public won’t continue to go to Gibson’s movies after this. Hate to say it, but if they’re good, they’ll go. Americans tend, for the most part, to have a dog-eat-dog capitalistic view of the world when it comes to their entertainment. If they enjoy it, they’ll pay for it, no matter who made it. Furthermore, you have to consider the nature of Hollywood: People assume that behind-the-scenes, everybody’s a jerk. Would anybody be surprised if Sean Penn, Barbara Streisand, & Tom Cruise were as much of a mess as Gibson when the cameras stopped rolling? It’s like politicians who get caught lying: The public assumes all of them lie, so they don’t hold it against them as much as they should. So, look for an apology from Gibson, a pledge to enter counseling of some sort, and some puff pieces from the entertainment media about how he’s turned his life around when he’s ready to do another movie. That’s how it works in Hollywood.

PS: Consider one final thing: A lot of people probably think Gibson has it made because he’s fabulously rich, enormously talented, & extraordinarily famous. But, is this a happy guy? He certainly doesn’t sound like it. There’s a message there: wealth, money, and fame are nice things to have, but they won’t make you happy.