Mel Gibson Decoded

The first big mistake Mel made was diverging from the clear and triumphant trail blazed by Hugh Grant years ago when he was found parked in West L.A. with a prostitute parked face-down in his lap. In essence, Hugh said, "I fucked up big time." The blow job blew over and Hugh went on to do some of his best work. In my book, Hugh set the standard against which all mea culpas must be measured. When you're caught carrying on in public like men frequently carry on in private, don't try to reinvent yourself as a misunderstood choir boy who simply lapsed, this one time, from otherwise exemplary behavior. It's, I don't know--wussy. No one buys it, and most especially the intended audience, the ticket-buying public. Elizabeth Hurley, of course, wasn't going to buy any of it anyway.

Of course - Hugh wasn't drunk, didn't resist arrest, didn't ask the arresting officer about his foreskin, and didn't blame Jews for all the wars in the world. Thus, Mel from the beginning, had a much tougher job of rehabilitation on his hands. Impossible task, in fact. He's through, and he probably knows it, despite his abject, obsequious, groveling, sickening press release, which would have made Uriah Heep blush, if he could have worked his way to the end. It included goodies such as:

''I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable,'' the actor-director said without elaborating.

Well, right away we see the problem of spending your life in make-believe. You didn't "act" out of control, Mel; you WERE out of control. Not, however (and this is quite odd), because of alcohol. Your BAC (blood alcohol concentration) was .12%, somewhat over the California standard of .08, not much over the old standard of .10, but if you really have the "disease" of alcoholism, which you cop to elsewhere in your nauseating apologia, this is really small beer.

I will confess that on festive occasions, I have, in the distant past, entered the .12 range myself. I know you shouldn't be driving, especially at 2:30 am on the Pacific Coast Highway on a weekend night when you're under that much sail. It's irresponsible, as Mel laudably admits. But it's not fall down drunk. If it were, half the tail-gaters at a Raiders game would never make it to their stadium seats by kickoff. A 170 pound man (I figure this is approximately Mel's tonnage, because I was surprised to read he's about 5'7" - that sly camera work!) needs about 5 beers in a one hour period to hit the .12% mark, but the concentration falls away at the rate of .015% per hour since the time of the first drink. It looks suspiciously like calculus to figure out how drunk you are at any snapshot in time, something you don't want to try with a full heater on.

But driving a car and knowing not to reveal your anti-Semitism are two very different things. The first involves motor skills, judgment and reflexes; the second requires having your head screwed on straight. Here is where I take issue with what Mel says in his PR note: with a buzz on, you don't "say things you don't believe to be true;" you say things you wish you hadn't said. At a cocktail party that goes on for two or three hours, with strong martinis going down the hatches, with maybe half the revelers nudging up against that .12% Rubicon, you don't ordinarily expect the guests to start screaming out anti-Jewish invective, revealing fears their children's blood may have found its way into the matzoh down at the synagogue. Not unless, of course, you happen to be throwing your cocktail party in Nuremburg in 1938.

Mel drank enough to reveal that he's a rabid anti-Semite. I suspected as much. His artful dodging on the question of the Holocaust, where he couldn't quite bring himself to dissociate himself from his father's denial, was a clue. The grotesque portrayal of Jews in "The Passion of the Christ" was another; and the slight loss of inhibition on the side of the PCH a few nights ago sealed the case. We now know what informed his "artistic" decisions in his Christian snuff film. Mel has been decoded, and we can thank his bad habits for that. He's diseased, all right, and it's safer to stay away from diseased people.