O.J. Simpson, Mel Gibson, and Michael Richards have all amazed us this year.
By this time, I think most of us have had it up to here with Mel Gibson and Michael Richards. Still, I think a summing-up is in order. Only time will tell if Gibson’s Malibu arrest will affect his career. I know I won’t be rushing out to see Apocalypto, but that has less to do with his anti-Semitic rant than with my wishing to avoid a long movie about a bunch of unwashed savages who eat with their hands, paint themselves blue and don’t speak English. I’m afraid they’d remind me too much of Oakland Raider fans.
Unlike Gibson’s scandal, there is a definite upside in all this for Richards. Even though he is now a 58-year-old has-been, the good news for the man is that after all these years people might finally stop calling him Kramer, and start calling him by his right name. The bad news is they probably won’t bother, and will simply call him Moron or Big Dummy.
This brings us to the O.J. Simpson saga. There seems to be a question as to whether he was paid the princely sum of $3.5 million to lend his name to a book and a TV special devoted to how he would have butchered the mother of his children if only those drug-crazed Martians hadn’t beaten him to it. But from everything he’s said about paying off his taxes and providing an annuity for his kids, that figure can’t be too far off. What I’d like to know is how, in the wake of the judgment levied against him in the civil suit, he, and not the Goldman family, gets to pocket the loot. Is Florida, as some people have suggested, a foreign country?
I must confess I found the response by Fox TV and Harper-Collins to be somewhat amusing. They reacted as if Simpson and Judith Regan had pulled a fast one on them, substituting sheer sleaze for what Rupert Murdoch and his minions had every reason to assume would be tasteful and informative entertainment. Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, they were shocked . . . shocked to discover they had underwritten something so vile that to call it obscene would constitute the epitome of British understatement.
Knowing Murdoch as we do, one can only wonder if this isn’t all an elaborate ruse that’s been carefully hatched in that canny old brain of his. After all, he’s not one to neglect cashing in on a billion dollars worth of publicity. So, unless I’m much mistaken, it’s good-bye to a free screening on Fox, and hello to a pay-per-view special and $29.95 DVDs.
Two other matters that have been preying on my mind as 2006 draws to a close involve prisons and diversity. Why do I keep reading that felons are being released from jail after serving only 10 or 20% of their sentences for lack of cells? Instead of wasting good money on campaigns to, say, curtail smoking or provide medical attention for illegals, why aren’t we building more and larger prisons? The silliest excuse I’ve heard is that people don’t want them built in their neighborhoods. Why not? What better way to keep kids law-abiding than to have this constant reminder of the nightmare that awaits them if they stray off the straight and narrow? Besides, inasmuch as most crime is committed by punks in the neighborhood, their loved ones wouldn’t have so far to travel on visiting day.
My problem with diversity, as some of us have come to know and hate it, is that the very people who are the loudest in lauding it are the same knuckleheads who simultaneously insist we’re all alike — none of us better or worse, smarter or dumber, than anybody else. So, how is it that they’re always pushing for affirmative action, always trying to disguise quotas with a beard and funny glasses? If it isn’t to prevent colleges and universities from winding up with 60% Asians, 30% Jews and 10% Others, why don’t they stop trying to rig enrollments?
BurtPrelutsky@aol.com
http://www.burtprelutsky.com/
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You know, Mel Gibson's rant can be summed up in five words…"Drunk People Say Stupid Stuff". The refusal of people to let this lack of a story die is ridiculous. The idea that people only say stuff they mean when they're drunk is silly. People do and say things all the time when they're drunk that doesn't even cross their mind when they're sober. Don't believe me? Ask a buddy who had a one night stand when drunk and then woke up to "Oh, my God, what have I done." It's not that liquor tore down some mental block that they had, which stopped them from doing what they always wanted to, but never had the courage to sober. It's that most drunk people are dumber than a six pound sack of stupid.
Everything that he has ever done suggests that not only is Mel Gibson NOT an anti-semite, but that he cares about the Jewish community. He went out of his way to get Jewish rabbis to approve of the passion and was deeply disturbed when they still complained. So he made a couple of dumb comments when drunk. Show me someone who starts writing the world's greatest novel or composing the world's greatest sonnet when trashed. All drunk people act dumb. And all of them do things that are completely out of character.
And it perplexes me that while the man got blitzed out of his mind and behind the wheel of a car, no one mentions that. Screw the two or three relatively mild Jew comments and the sugar tits reference, this is what's offensive. The man put everyone on the road around him at risk, and that he didn't kill someone is simply God's benevolence. To focus on a couple of silly comments, that are bland to anyone who has ever listened to Saint Cindy (sober) for more than two minutes, instead of criminal neglegence that very easily could've resulted in a tragic death, shows a terrible lack of grasp. That both the media and commentors not only won't let this incident slide, and when they talk about it exclude the important parts shows how so many of us have a sadly mistaken sense of priority.
Comment by WolvenBear | December 5, 2006
Excuse me Mr. WolvenBear, but you have got this all wrong. Mel Gibson hates jews and he proved it that night. You are just an insensative person who probably shares a hatred for jews as well. You are a sad individual…..
HA HA! just kidding. Had ya goin there for a minute didn't I. I agree with you. I think he was just hammered and said some dumb things. Thats all there is to it. Lets see if some sensitivity police (liberals) post after me and writes some of thier typical nonsense like the stupid **** that I wrote above this.
Comment by J North | December 7, 2006
Ha. You did indeed have me going.
It takes a pretty stupid person to overlook the fact that Gibson could've killed a number of people on his little drunken joy ride…and then get offended that he uttered stupid comments while sloshed.
Quite frankly, I feel that if you don't fine Gibson's reckless endangerment of everyone else on the road disgusting…you're too worthless for me to care if you found his comments in bad taste.
Hmmm, fundreds of lives, one or two hurt feelings…dozens of lives, one or two hurt feelings…I'm soooo conflicted.
Comment by WolvenBear | December 8, 2006
Drunk people do indeed say stupid things, but I firmly believe that Gibson at his core is not anti-semitic…no more than if in a druken (or non-druken) rage he called a woman a "bitch" that that automatically means he is a chauvanist and woman hater.
I have a theory…and without talking to Mr. Gibson about it privately, it will have to remain just that: a theory. But here is my theory nonetheless…
As Gibson tried to get the major studios to support his recent film "The Passion," he ran into innumerable roadblocks in Hollywood…both in major studios refusing to fund/produce it, and also afterwards in helping to promote/distribute it. If you recall, it ended up being bankrolled almost entirely by Mr. Gibson personally, and the marketing campaign was very much a grass-roots effort of going church-to-church to create awareness. The only thing that mainstream Hollywood (many of the Jewish by the way) and the mainstream media did to help promote the film was to create a scandal of sorts by calling Gibson anti-Semitic for (in their words) "making a film that portrays Jews as the murderers of Christ. "
Hmmm. Using that warped reasoning, one would have to conclude that the New Testament is equally anti-semitic.
Anyway, it isn't much of a stretch to assume that this treatment by the Hollywood "elite" (many of whom are Jews) would result in some pent-up animosity by Gibson.
So, I view Gibson's druken rant not as a tirade against all Jews, or the Jewish Nation, or the Jewish ethnicity. I view it as a tirade against the Jewish "Hollywood Elite". When he said "*&%^#! Jews" I think he was really saying "*&%^#! HOLLYWOOD Jews."
There is a difference.
Now that doesn't excuse what he says…it merely puts it into some kind of plausible perspective that I would suggest is not just possible, it's probable. But understandably, Gibson himself could never offer this kind of explanation publicly. He's just had to quietly endure the scorn. I just hope it will not stop him from making more good movies.
Comment by nevadamistermom | December 8, 2006