The Last Temptation of Mel

So now the deputy at ground zero of Mel Gibson's anti-semitic meltdown is downplaying the incident:

"That stuff is booze talking," the deputy said. "There's two things that booze does. It amplifies your basic personality. If you are a laid-back kind of person, just an easygoing kind of person, booze is going to amplify that and you'll be just sitting around going how it's a wonderful day.

"But, if you are a high-strung person, it's going to amplify that, and all the bad things are going to come out."

The thing is, alcohol is a depressant, in that it lowers a person's inhibitions. Alcohol doesn't make you say "things that I do not believe and which are despicable"--it makes you say despicable beliefs that you would otherwise keep to yourself. Honestly, people, how many drunken midnight confessions of unrequited love do we have to suffer through before accepting this as a Universal Truth? As a Catholic, I find Gibson's equivocation on the matter particularly annoying: He can't have it both ways. Gibson references the Vatican and papal condemnations of anti-Semitism as a defense:

"To be anti-Semitic is a sin," he said. "It's been condemned by one Papal Council after another. To be anti-Semitic is to be un-Christian, and I'm not."

But at the same time, Gibson refuses to repudiate his father, the notoriously anti-Semitic Hutton Gibson:

Like his father Hutton Gibson, Mel Gibson follows an ultra-traditionalist branch of Catholicism that still conducts Latin Masses and rejects almost all the modern teachings of the church.

Hutton Gibson is a Sedevacantist, a Catholic breakaway sect which even rejects the legitimacy of the modern popes.

Theologians say it's a belief system underpinned by anti-Semitism and it could have fuelled Mel Gibson's outburst.

So then... Mel still stands behind his father and church, which doesn't recognize the legitamacy of the papacy. Mel, here's a hint: if you're Sedevantantist, quoting the pope and papal councils as your defense against charges of anti-Semitism doesn't hold much water. You're full of mealy-mouthed weasle words and too chickenshit to own up to what you really are. One thing's for sure--if Gibson actually were Roman Catholic, he'd be due for an excommunication right about now.

Now Playing: Jimmy Buffet Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads