Hitchens may have cancer, but he can still kick Braveheart’s ass:
Every time Mel Gibson unburdens himself of a tirade against Jews or “n______s” or uncooperative females, there are commentators on hand to create a mystery where none exists. When he produced The Passion of the Christ, which lovingly and in detail recycled the bloody myth that all Jews are historically and collectively responsible for the murder of Jesus, it was argued by many mainstream Christians that his zeal for the faith might be a touch lurid but that the film itself was mainly devotional. When he was arrested on the Malibu freeway and screamed abuse at a police officer to the effect that Jews were responsible for all the wars in the world, pundits convened on page and screen to speculate whether our Mel had too much to drink that evening. Not long ago, I watched him go completely bug-eyed on television at a Jewish interviewer who asked him about the latter incident. “You’ve got a dog in this fight, haven’t you?” he hissed. And now, in the wake of a Niagara of cloacal abuse directed at the mother of his youngest child, in which we were spared nothing by way of obscenity and menace and nothing by way of paranoid and sexualized racism, there have been those who diagnose Gibson’s problem as a lack of anger management skills, combined perhaps with a touch of narcissistic personality disorder.
This is extraordinary. We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.
Gibson is no Mother Teresa, that’s for sure.
The Moar You Know
And here’s the ultimate taboo. We will go through any intellectual contortions needed to avoid blaming religion for a man’s dickheaded actions in this so very fucked-up society of ours. Even though said religion is so very obviously the root of the problem.
jayjaybear
When DID the media’s job become damage control for conservatives with a taste for shoe leather, anyway? Uncle Walter retired when I wasn’t quite in my teens, and I think he was the last of the really good guys on network news.
ETA: Moar: I think it’s a combination of an overwhelming need to protect religion and my own idea that they’re doing damage control for conservative celebrities (including politicians). A media that can seriously cover Newt Gingrich without parenthetically noting that he served one of his exes with divorce papers while she was hospitalized with cancer but can’t even mention John Edwards without reminding us that he cheated on his cancer-stricken wife is a media that has no sense of its duty or place.
David in NY
“fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church”
Well, yes. Didn’t think Hitchens could be that precise.
debg
Rock on, Hitchens.
JCT
Frank Rich in the NYT also nailed this nicely in the Sunday paper yesterday.
General Stuck
LOL. islamofascism for 400 Alex.
Two peanuts in a pod. IYAM. yawn
Jay in Oregon
@The Moar You Know:
Unless we’re talking about Islam or other “fringe”/”new age” belief system — those are fair game.
New Yorker
@The Moar You Know:
We also absolve religious organizations of any blame for crimes they’ve committed. Someone please explain to me how the Catholic Church isn’t just a global organized crime family at this point?
scav
Laugh. “You’ve got a dog in this fight, haven’t you?” to the interviewer? Well, Mel, you apparently are the dog in this fight.
Joshua
Nothing beats Hitch on Hannity & Colmes after Falwell died:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,273295,00.html
kommrade reproductive vigor
Actor Mel Gibson was hospitalized today after Christopher Hitchens administered a brutal verbal cock punching …
It is the need to gobble the knob of anyone who is rich and famous.
WereBear
It’s pretty simple. They are afraid of being accused of liberal bias. They are not afraid of being accused of conservative bias.
Because no one has made them afraid of it.
I would like to spread the meme that it is their obvious and unbridled conservative bias that is making them lose subscribers and die a death of a Thousand Cuts.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Silver
@New Yorker:
Simple. The mafia frowns on fucking little boys in the ass. Don’t try to compare them to the Catholic Church.
MBunge
“When he produced The Passion of the Christ, which lovingly and in detail recycled the bloody myth that all Jews are historically and collectively responsible for the murder of Jesus”
It did nothing of the sort, unless you believe any retelling of the crucifixion is anti-Semitical. You can certainly criticize The Passion for its Dark Ages’ guilt trip focus on Jesus’ suffering, but that’s another thing.
Mike
New Yorker
BTW, this isn’t the first time Hitchens did this to Mel. If you’ve read “God is Not Great”, you’ll recall where Hitch refers to “The Passion of the Christ” as a “soap-opera movie” produced by “an Australian fascist and ham actor”.
ajr22
Mel Gibson Kyle…Mel Gibson.
New Yorker
@Joshua:
Here’s the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doKkOSMaTk4
Ash Can
If we want to get all philosophical about it, I see the religious fanaticism/personality disorder issue as sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario. They’re related, to be sure, but is it a causal relationship? And if so, does the fanaticism cause the disorder or vice versa (I believe the latter)?
Regardless, though, good for Hitchens for calling out Gibson’s execrable behavior.
J.W. Hamner
Well, sure, he may be a fascist racist antisemite wife beater, but Mad Max was pretty entertaining! I say we give him a pass.
cyd
Neither, for that matter, was Mother Teresa.
Mnemosyne
It would also be nice if we could talk about this as a very clear, very public case of domestic violence, but that’s going to happen sometime after the religion discussion, I’m guessing.
Rihanna was lucky that she was actually more successful than Chris Brown when he beat her up, or she would have gotten the same treatment in the press that Oksana Grigorieva is getting.
me
@Joshua: They skipped transcribing the best part when Hitch says “If they gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.”
asiangrrlMN
@Mnemosyne: I agree with this. The domestic violence aspect is always a ho-hum thing for the press or fodder for speculation as to why the woman (or man, but usually woman in high profile cases) deserves it.
As for Gibson, I am fresh out of give a damn. He can rot in hell for all I care, right next to his asshole father.
Mnemosyne
@Ash Can:
Yep. Are we really supposed to be surprised that an abusive guy like Gibson would be drawn to a church that’s even more repressive against women than Roman Catholicism post-Vatican II?
General Stuck
@J.W. Hamner:
Okay by me. Mel Gibson living in his own skin seems like punishment enough for being a chip off the old block. And I liked Apocalypto also too.
I don’t know what Hitchens excuse is? Maybe John Barleycorn does.
I would add however. Violations of the law should be adjudicated, above and beyond being a simple asshole. Gibson should get no breaks for beating women.
DougJ
It takes a lot of guts for Hitchens to kick Mel Gibson now. Wow.
Svensker
Screw Hitchens, the little war monger. He likes to sit back and criticize Mother Teresa while he’s hanging out at posh New York bars urging other people to go fight and die in a stupid fucking war. Mother Teresa may have had problems, may not have been the most perfect saint that she has been portrayed but, when push comes to shove, was it Christopher Hitchens out there washing the poor? Hell no. Was it Christopher Hitchens out there helping lepers and the unclean? Hell no. Was it Christopher Hitchens wiping the vomit from the sick? Hell no. The only vomit Hitch knows is that which he spews in his writing and and in the toilet after he’s had his nightly too many drinks.
The nerve of that smarmy little self-satisfied war mongering PRICK to criticize anyone… Sputter sputter.
I dislike Christopher Hitchens.
As for Mel, what a disaster. I hope he gets the help he so obviously needs.
jl
@MBunge: There are four gospels, and four passion narratives. So, Gibson had choices to make.
The Arrest and Sentencing of Jesus (pdf file)
A Historical Reconstruction
Philip A. Cunningham, Boston College
Journal of Religion & Society Supplement Series 1
The Kripke Center 2004
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2004-8.pdf
Svensker
@DougJ:
Yes. He really is a little prick.
Chris
@WereBear: I love that idea!
Mike in NC
Two more people you definitely wouldn’t want to sit down and have a beer with.
jl
@asiangrrlMN: I agree too. Gibson’s behavior, coupled with his own admissions on the tapes is pretty much open and shut case of domestic abuse, IMO.
Not sure how religion, or whether she should or shouldn’t have taped the conversations (I’d get any maniac like that I had the misfortune of dealing with on tape, no matter what) etc. changes anything.
MBunge
“There are four gospels, and four passion narratives. So, Gibson had choices to make.”
And what choices did he make that were anti-Semitical? I’m being serious, here. The image of Judaism I was raised with was Charlton Heston, so if I’m missing something about The Passion, I’d like to know what it is. Despite people reflexively referring to the film as being anti-Semitic, I’ve never seen someone explain exactly what about the movie is so objectionable on those grounds.
Mike
jl
@MBunge: You have a point that any retelling of the passion is liable to charges of anti-Semitism. I think viewers sensitive to that charge thought the film identified the gospel stories of the role of the local religious establishment too much with popular sentiment among the people, which the gospels report were with Jesus. But that is just my opinion.
Marmot
@Svensker: Truly. But you forgot Hitchens’ self-description as “America’s preeminent man of letters” (as related by Studs Terkel).
Also too, The Road Warrior is awesome, but Gibson and Hitchens can still both have narcissistic personality disorder and simultaneously be utter pricks. Unity 2012!
licensed to kill time
@MBunge:
Mike, start here. It was widely discussed at the time the movie came out.
MikeJ
@MBunge: Imagine occupied Iraq. A sunni cleric attacks a shia mosque during the holiest holiday. The imperial occupying power has the cleric arrested and executed.
Do you blame the death of that cleric on the empire or shia? If you blame the victim of the attacks, members of that group might think you’re biased against them.
rb
The image of Judaism I was raised with was Charlton Heston….
Well, there’s your problem.
DonkeyKong
Nothing makes a homophobe like Gibson crazier than being slapped with a big fat mind penis.
Amanda in the South Bay
The problem with criticizing the Society of St. Pius X-that’s the name of the splinter organization-is that calling them batshit fucking insane wackos will instantly get you canned for anti-Catholicism. Cause I have it on good authority from Philip Jenkins, Peter Kreeft, the Knights of Colombus and other assorted scholars of distinction that anti-Catholicism is the world’s worst prejudice EVER.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@WereBear:
This. The WH reporter I know admitted that to me a couple of years back. The editors would get deluged with conservative complains about liberal bias and then lean on the reporters to change the tone of coverage.
They don’t fear it the other way because we don’t bother to shriek at them. Instead, we stop buying their product. Of course they don’t get the causal relationship between the two.
Mark S.
@jl:
I’ve read arguments that the Gospels were written for the main purpose of appealing to Romans and distancing Christianity from the Jews in the wake of the recent Jewish revolt.
scav
ahh, if only it would leave a Mark, Luke, Matthew and John, but it probably ain’t gonna take — Mad Mel would probably just glory in the stigmata.
Bobby Thomson
@Mark S.:
Certainly not the Gospel of Matthew, which is aimed strongly at a Jewish audience with the viewpoint that the second coming will occur during the reader’s lifetime.
kommrade reproductive vigor
So wait. He’s the member of some version of the RCC on steroids but he’s making out-of-wedlock nookie … And how many times has this guy been married?
Oh right. Another neo-con hypocrite.
Unless you ask Doughy Pantload who has unofficially made Mel an icky lieberul.
Warren Terra
@Svensker
Yes, we must remember Hitchens is belligerent scum, and goes beyond hating religious extremism and nonsense to hating the religious. But (a younger) Hitchens was right about Mother Theresa.
hal
Now that I’ve googled cloacal…
I’ve been pretty amused at the contortions people have performed to justify Mel Gibson’s tirades, (fake tapes! Photoshop! Alcoholism!)
It’s amazing when confronted with real anti-semitism, misogyny, or racism, some people don’t know what to do. When the NAACP calls out someone for holding up a sign with the words Niggar on it, we have to have a multi-day debate on what it all really means. Are people really that out of touch?
cmorenc
Mel Gibson is undoubtedly a brilliantly talented actor and director, capable of presenting spellbindingly absorbing performances. See Braveheart for the former, and Apocalypto for the latter.
Gibson also perfectly illustrates that the correlation between brilliant talent and decency of character and mentality is unfortunately fairly weak. He’s abundantly proven lately that he harbors a deep abrasive, abusive, nasty, short-fused bigoted streak that he is unable (and too often unwilling) to suppress or change, a tendency exacerbated by his other flaw of succumbing to alcohol-fueled rages. In a much more charmingly friendly form, this dichotomy was the central theme of Amadeus (a movie that fortunately Mel Gibson had nothing whatever to do with), the (fictional) hypothesis that the historical Mozart was actually an immensely talented twit to be around.
How we as his audience are to handle this dichotomy in Gibson’s case is a bit tricky; I don’t want to toss the DVDs of Braveheart or Mad Max that I own and enjoy into the trash, never to watch again. OTOH, I seriously doubt I’ll ever go to any future movie Mel Gibson acts in or produces ever again, or purchase any DVDs of movies he’s in that I don’t already own. He’s dead to me now as an actor/producer.
Mark S.
@Bobby Thomson:
On the other hand, Matthew is the only gospel to have the blood curse that was so controversial in the Gibson film.
MBunge
“Mike, start here. It was widely discussed at the time the movie came out.”
I checked it out and it’s pretty much what I was talking about. Except for one line from a Jewish character about Jesus’ blood being on us and our childrens’ heads, there’s very little in the way of specific objections to The Passion itself. And that line is at least arguably defensible because in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, the Jews are the stand-ins for all of Humanity rejecting Jesus.
Mike
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Hitchens: “The Passion of the Christ, which lovingly and in detail recycled the bloody myth that all Jews are historically and collectively responsible for the murder of Jesus,”
I’m afraid I can’t agree with this characterization. Gibson did not “recycle” that particular myth, he merely repeated standard Christian doctrine with a fairly straightforward interpretation of a text that is reproduced in every motel room. I’m not going to speculate on the origin of Gibson’s anti-semitism, but if you’re going to make a movie that’s somewhat faithful to the Gospels it’s going to look a lot like Gibson’s movie (with gratuitous violence added, of course). I’m more disturbed by his apparent attraction to stories of grotesque violence and turning it into banality.
Warren Terra
@MBunge:
Fifteen hundred years of persecution would like to disagree with you there, Mike.
It all depends on which gospel you’re reading, but there are some extremely anti-semitic elements to the New Testament, even before Gibson (or any other interpreter eager to highlight the aspects that interests him) gets his hands on them – the episode with the money changers in the Temple is one; the whole business where “Pharisees” is made into a scare-word is another, at various points; and, of course, the Crucifixion story is rife with slams at the Jewish citizens, the Jewish clergy, and the local (Jewish) state authorities. There are reasons for this, of course; after all, the institutional Church that compiled the New Testament evolved as the Roman state’s way of keeping people in line, so of course the villains had to be the foreign Other and their clerical and civic leaders, while the Romans couldn’t be portrayed in too bad a light).
Now, I haven’t seen Gibson’s film, nor will I, but I’ve read credible accounts that the anti-semitic elements are played for all their worth, including most especially hook-nosed caricatures for the identifiable Jews, a cosmetic treatment not given to Jim Caveziel, while the Romans are (as usual) relatively ennobled.
John Arbuthnot Fisher
@Amanda in the South Bay: Ah, someone else aware of how horrendous Peter Kreeft is! Never had him myself at BC, but the depth of his relationship with the fundamentalism of C.S. Lewis was nearly wetsuit-esque.
evinfuilt
@Svensker:
Of course Mother Teresa never did any of that either. But why stop your rant there. She did more to make their lives worse than Hitchens ever did drinking a Martini. He’s far from a saint, but if all Saints are like Mother Teresa, that’s a bonus.
And I love people defending Mel Gibson from poor ol Hitchens who can barely walk or talk right now due to Chemo.
EJ
Hitch has to blame Mel’s religion because the simple explanation, that he’s just another overpaid, loudmouthed, egotistical, drunken asshole, would hit a little too close to home.
catclub
@MBunge:
Of course that one line has its history in Exodus (?)
where the blood of a sacrificial animal is cast on the people
in order to purify them/take away their sins/confirm the covenant.
So when they _ask_ that Jesus’s blood be on them it could easily be in that sense, rather than in the sense of the blood libel – blame us for his death forever.
I also agree with MBunge that given the population of Jerusalem at the time,
when the people or the Jews reject him, that indicates all of us in the rejection.
Mnemosyne
@MBunge:
That “one line” has a very long and very ugly history in Catholicism of being used to persecute Jews because they’re supposedly guilty of murdering Jesus. That was one of the big changes of Vatican II — Pope John XXIII specifically rejected that part of Catholic dogma and wrote a prayer begging forgiveness for the church’s treatment of Jews over the centuries.
And, hey, look, Mel Gibson belongs to a breakaway Catholic church that specifically rejects the teachings of Vatican II, has a crazy Holocaust-denying father, and has himself said he doesn’t think the Holocaust really happened. Nope, there’s no way a guy like that could be putting anti-Semitic messages into his Jesus movie.
Mnemosyne
@evinfuilt:
I see that, like Hitchens, you have no idea what the difference is between a hospice and a hospital.
Little Dreamer
@Ash Can:
There are apologists for both sides who will argue this out for decades and never come to a conclusion, meanwhile the public will watch in wonder and amazement at the streams of bullshit coming from both sides and won’t be able to figure out how to even ask “WTF are you talking about”? One’s beliefs are never questioned, even if those believes are reprehensible. Freedom of religion must be respected for anyone who believes, just not for athiests or muslims or any non-Judeo/Christian religions.
wobbly
@EJ:
Yes, indeed. Gallipoli was a great movie, and Gibson was great in it.
He should have stuck with acting and stayed in Australia.
But we all make mistakes.
Thank God none of mine are on tape.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
Only if that religion is a socially approved on like Christianity or to a lesser extent Judaism. If they’re a follower of a disapproved of religion, like Wicca or Islam, or worst of all if they’re Atheists, we’re happy to blame every thing they do wrong on their religious beliefs (or lack thereof). Members of the majority are always individuals, so anything they do wrong reflects badly only on themselves rather than the group they’re part of. Minorities are members of a collective, so their mistakes reflect badly on the whole group.
drkrick
@MBunge: In addition to the Gospels, by Gibson’s own account one of the key sources for the film was the visions of St. Anne Catherine Emmerich. These visions, published as The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, purport to be visionary eyewitness accounts of the actual events from a 19th century German nun and have been frequently criticized as containing anti-Semitic embellishments of the biblical accounts. In any case, they are far from standard Christian versions of the events of the Passion.
Econwatcher
This is the old Hitch that I knew and loved. No one dishes the venom better than he. Problem is, he used to pick his targets better than he generally has in recent years. But Mel is a worthy enough target.
And Dougj, I think you missed the point: Hitchens wasn’t just hitting Gibson while he was down, although that was part of it (and when it’s really deserved, what’s wrong with that?) He was pointing out that Gibson’s bile may actually reflect not just the rantings of one lone man, but the collective position of a well-financed splinter group in a major worldwide institution. That, too, seems a worthy target to me.
And no, none of this excuses Hitchens’ own sins. But you can see what Hitchens could have achieved if he’d applied his talents more constructively and consistently.
I hope he beats the cancer and gets a second act.
Andre
You know, I see stuff around about Gibson being a Conservative Catholic, but what I don’t get is how that works given that he’s in the process of filing for divorce (which started off because he got his girlfriend pregnant.)
I mean, I’m not going to try making logical sense of another person’s religious beliefs, but seriously, how does that work?
eemom
what is this about Mother Theresa??
Warren Terra
@eemom:
Back before 9/11, when he was an iconoclastic columnist for the Nation and before he was mainly known as a vociferous critic of religion, especially Islam, and as a cheerleader for war in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran (and possibly Turkey), Hitchens was perhaps most famous for three things: he was in favor of the Clinton impeachment, and revealed something or other that showed Clinton to be less than honest about his dalliance (shocking!), information that Hitchens had learned from his then-friend Sidney Blumenthal; he was an outspoken critic of Henry Kissinger, and wrote the book “The Trial Of Henry Kissinger” (later a documentary); and he was just about the only person with any sort of media platform who spoke out against the positive portrayal usually given to Mother Theresa.
For this last, you can read his agument in the link from the main post. I happen to think Hitchens has a good argument about Mother Theresa.
growingdaisies
Oh, screw Christopher Hitchens, that warmongering, sexist, bigoted, egotistic twit. An asshole who occasionally hits upon an appropriate target is still an asshole. I’ve never understood why anyone cares what this blowhard has to say.
kansi
@growingdaisies: Yes, this, indeedy.
New Yorker
@DougJ:
Um, Doug, he was doing this when Gibson was at his pinnacle right as “The Passion of the Christ” was released.
See this:
http://www.slate.com/id/2096323
and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZacntGQwBBs
Donald
This sentence alone made the whole column worth reading
Donald
@growingdaisies:
Um – because he write well and is fun to read? Your name-calling just makes you sound stupid.
Provide examples of each slur-bestowed attribute, please. CH’s support of the (second) Iraq war will not establish sexism, bigotry, or egotism.
Donald
@Donald: make that this sentence, and I evidently can’t do BJ-style HTML tags:
“This schismatic crackpot sect is headed by Mel Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson, a nutty autodidact with a sideline in Holocaust denial.”
maus
@Svensker: Don’t forget that he reiterated recently that there are still Weapons of Mass Destruction out there in Iraq, and that history will vindicate him.
Mnemosyne
@Donald:
Well, there was the whole “Why Women Aren’t Funny” thing in the misogynist column.
Wait, let me guess — if I don’t agree that women aren’t funny, then clearly I’m proving Hitchens’ point by being a humorless bitch, right?
cokane
I never recall Gibson railing for wars and bombings of innocent people. If someone can provide evidence of this fine. Otherwise, he’s just a drunken idiot, much like Hitchens.
Josh
No, Gibson’s not faithful to the Gospels.
Although I agree that Hitchens has by and large sided with the Forces of Evil over the past ten years, it’s a good article; but I don’t think his prose will ever return to the level it was on in the eighties. Wonder why it deteriorated so?
eemom
@Warren Terra:
Thanks. I followed the link and read some other stuff as well. I never knew ANY of that about the sainted MT.
Oh well. Another mass deception, of a particularly insidious kind.
Josh
For readers with more time, I wunna share David Neiwert’s accounts of where Gibson’s distortions come from. Here and here. Great essays on how medieval antisemitism informs the movie.
There was also a heart-rending blog comment somewhere by “patriotboy” about how one of his Jewish wife’s community college students saw the movie and came back saying that she now understood that the Holocaust had to happen to punish the Jews for what they’d done.
Josh
Cokane, that’s interesting: Gibson indeed opposed the Iraq war, perhaps for isolationist reasons like Pat Buchanan. OTOH, Iraq war casualties are not yet up to the level created by the side that Gibson and Buchanan sympathize with in WWII.
DPirate
This ass should just stfu. You know, because:
You think?
How you could watch The Passion of the Christ and blame the guy’s mother for his torture, I’ll never know. Of course, you cannot, unless you are trotting out the old “Say anything bad about a jew and you are Hitler” stupidity.
DPirate
Also, and more to the point:
You people and your Paris Hilton porn videos…
scav
The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable pretty much sums up the whole sordid fracas, no? With a spot of the unrepentant in support of the indigestible.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
And the fact she was beaten by a “black thug”, as opposed to a dashing white fellow.
KXB
Judaism, Christianity, Islam – I don’t trust any faith that comes out of a desert. That heat makes you crazy.
Dakota1783
Oh yes… Mel is just about one and the same as Mother T…the difference is Mel makes movies and Mama T wasn’t photogenic.
By the way, Tunch looks like Boss Tweed.