Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Why must everything amusing and awkward be canceled!

Posted by: plunge | August 1, 2006 11:50 AM

No word on whether they will also be cancelling David Duke's series about slavery or Osama Bin Laden's documentary on the evils of religious extremism.

Posted by: No One of Consequence | August 1, 2006 12:42 PM

Ed, does the church really hold Holocaust poo-pooing as a tenet? Or is that just something Gibson's father expressed in that interview?

It was my understanding that this fringe church is basically "Vatican 2 is full of it, and if you aren't Catholic you really are going to hell" not necessarily the First World Church of Jewhate. They just believe that, contrary the to the more wishy washy stance on salvation that the current hurch holds, the Jews along with everyone else that isn't Catholic are going to be wiped out and tortured for eternity. To, I have a hard time seeing how that's better than Holocaust denial, of course. If anything, it's worse

Posted by: plunge | August 1, 2006 2:04 PM

Here's Gibson fils on being asked if he denies the Holocaust. He avoids outright denial, but his response fits perfectly into the minimisation and contextualisation tropes of deniers like Irving:

I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.

Posted by: Ginger Yellow | August 1, 2006 2:30 PM

a forthcoming Mel Gibson-directed miniseries on the holocaust

Posted by: wamba | August 1, 2006 3:06 PM

What's the old saying, "Like father, ... "? Or is it something about acorns not falling far from the tree?

You misspelled In vino veritas. A friend put it this way -- "The booze didn't put words in his mouth, it let the words in his brain come out of his mouth."

Posted by: Pieter B | August 1, 2006 3:43 PM

ABC contends that it pulled the miniseries because two years had passed without Gibson's people producing a script. I'd say that's sufficient reason to pull the plug, and Gibson's self-destructive babbling was probably the final straw.

But two years without a script? Something tells me Gibson's plan to do a miniseries on the Holocaust was more like window dressing. I'd bet he never really intended to follow through on it but could point to it as a sign that he really is a good guy. Look what he's trying to do.

Booze may have loosened his tongue, but it didn't put those thoughts in his brain.

Posted by: pablo | August 1, 2006 4:00 PM

Ohh, and Ed's joke is entirely appropriate here; why in the world was he offered a miniseries on the holocaust in the first place? It's not like there are a scarcity of jewish people in the entertainment industry.

Posted by: Matthew | August 1, 2006 4:15 PM

Why do you think that Jews are somehow more suitable than non-Jews to make a miniseries on Holocaust?

I don't think its that non-Jews aren't suitable to make a Holocaust miniseries. Its that Mel Gibson is completely unsuitable to make one.

Posted by: Will | August 2, 2006 8:11 AM

In the U.S. there are a lot of Jewish people in the entertainment industry, that's why. If you wanted to do a mini-series on the holocaust, why you would pick one of the many Jewish people, especially those with close family who were in the holocaust, and instead get a guy who's father is a holocaust denier and who himself made a film which picked the most anti-semitic gospel to use for the story of Jesus' death, is beyond me.

Posted by: Matthew | August 2, 2006 12:03 PM