Decision ‘08

Hitchens On Gibson

I liked Passion of the Christ, okay, and I was positively thrilled that it was such a phenomenal success, but still, Mel Gibson’s assurances that he wasn’t an anti-Semite kind of look rather weak after his latest drunken tirade, don’t they? But why should I address the subject? Well, because I want to. Rather, I want to point you to Christopher Hitchens, who has a way with these things:

I was just in the middle of writing a long and tedious essay, about how to tell a real anti-Semite from a person who too-loudly rejects the charge of anti-Semitism, when a near-perfect real-life example came to hand. That bad actor and worse director Mel Gibson, pulled over for the alleged offense of speeding and the further alleged offense of speeding under the influence, decided that he needed to demand of the arresting officer whether he was or was not Jewish and that he furthermore needed to impart the information that all the world’s wars are begun by those of Semitic extraction.

Call me thin-skinned if you must, but I think that this qualifies. I also think that the difference between the blood-alcohol levels—and indeed the speed limits—that occasioned the booking are insufficient to explain the expletives (as Gibson has since claimed in a typically self-pitying and verbose statement put out by his publicist). One does not abruptly decide, between the first and second vodka, or the ticks of the indicator of velocity, that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are valid after all.

Hitchens goes too far, as he always does when the subject is religion…yet and still, bad on you, Mel!…