Gibson is An Idiot, Not a Criminal

One problem with prosecuting "thought" - among many problems - is that the you squelch the opportunity for these idiots to reveal themselves.

I think you fell for some bad reporting. I had been tempted to write about the story you cite, but after I looked at it and looked for some sort of confirmation and couldn't find any, I concluded that it should be taken with a huge grain of salt. If you go to the ADL website, you will see that the actual ADL press release does not call for Gibson to be prosecuted for hate crimes, but rather for Hollywood producers to boycott him.

I'm no big fan of Abe Foxman. He's quite capable of saying rather idiotic and over-the-top things. I've even mentioned him in a very early Hitler Zombie piece. But the consensus among those of us affiliated with The Holocaust History Project is that this story is very fishy at the very least and probably an intentional distortion.

Gibson is An Idiot, Not a Criminal

Gibson has already suffered consequences from his drunken bigotry as ABC has just cancelled his Holocaust miniseries.

The article has him specifically calling for hate crime prosecution. It's hard to imagine that they were just mistaken about that detial.

Just in under the wire:
Mel says sorry to the Jews:
http://drudgereport.com/flash3.htm

The article has him specifically calling for hate crime prosecution. It's hard to imagine that they were just mistaken about that detial.

No it's not. I've seen such things time and time again in the press. Heck, sometimes urban legends find their way into the press reported as straight news, as if they were true.

In any case, note that the article never directly quoted Fox calling for a hate crime investigation. It paraphrased him as having done so and then quoted him on one sentence. Also, the article as cited doesn't jibe with the press release on the ADL site, as I pointed out. That press release calls on Hollywood to ostracize Gibson; it does not call for any "hate crime" investigation. Indeed, the term "hate crime" is nowhere to be seen:

Mel Gibson's apology is unremorseful and insufficient. It's not a proper apology because it does not go to the essence of his bigotry and his anti-Semitism.

His tirade finally reveals his true self and shows that his protestations during the debate over his film "The Passion of the Christ," that he is such a tolerant, loving person, were a sham. It may well be that the bigotry has been passed from the father to the son. It is unfortunate that it took an excess of booze and an encounter with a police officer to reveal what was really in his heart and mind.

We would hope that Hollywood now would realize the bigot in their midst and that they will distance themselves from this anti-Semite.

Given some of Foxman's loonier statements, it wouldn't have surprised me if he had called for a "hate crime investigation." However, given the lack of corroboration from other sources and the discrepancy between the cited story and the actual ADL press release, I still treat the claim that Foxman called for a hate crime investigation to be dubious at best.

It's entirely possible that the report in the Scotsman was wrong. It's certainly possible that Foxman's words were taken out of context, or exaggerated. This would not be unheard of.

Regardless of the hate crime issue, it's hard not to believe that if it had been anybody else, they would have been arrested for something like resisting arrest, or attempted bribery, or even assaulting a police officer.

When people well known to us are subjected to extreme stress, they may say and do things that are distinctly out of character. The cause may be the sudden and tragic loss of a loved one, the excrutiating pain of cancer, the soul destroying discovery of infidelity, or any one of a thousand things that seriously impact us from time to time.

When we are on the receiving end of this behavior, we make allowances, because of the circumstances. We know that the person who is screaming a tirade of abuse at us or throwing punches left and right, or telling us they never want to see us again, is not in what we like to call their right frame of mind.

We know that under normal circumstances they would never say or do the things that they have just said or done.

Alcohol in excess can strip away all control, removing that thin veneer of civilization in ways that can shock and dismay observers - but we know that it's just the drink talking. It's a piece of common knowledge about an effect that crosses many boundaries - financial, cultural, racial, social, you name it. It doesn't matter who you are, when you're drunk you are not yourself.

IMHO Mel Gibson isn't an anti-Semite - he's just a guy who, like so many who've had a skinful, does and says things that under normal circumstances he would not dream of doing or saying.

Like many others, he simply has a problem with alcohol and he knows it. Why add to his already heavy burden by attributing characteristics to him that you must know are solely the result of drunkenness?

...The government has no business policing beliefs, only actions.

I may be mistaken, but isn't that a little like arguing that doctors should only treat symptoms, not the cause?

Because, surely, actions stem from beliefs?

So if you don't deal with the beliefs in some way (I'm not advocating a particular method), you're condemned to forever have to deal with the actions that stem from them.

Since you can't reprogram everyone to eliminate extreme, antisocial, or otherwise inimical beliefs, you're left with trying to rein them in as best you can, and since that's not something that can ever work on an individual level, it has to be undertaken by some overarching authority... government, perhaps?

Just a thought.

Ancient Brit-

Sorry, I don't buy this one bit. That Gibson is an anti-semite is well established long before he got drunk and ranted at a cop. As for the suggestion that government deal with beliefs and not actions, how on earth do you do that and maintain liberty? Forced re-education classes? Gulags?

The government has no business policing beliefs, only actions.

As for the suggestion that government deal with beliefs and not actions, how on earth do you do that and maintain liberty? Forced re-education classes? Gulags?

Well said.

Isn't it bad enough that we have self-appointed "thought police" and sanctimonious blowhards in the media and speaking on the floors of Congress? Do we really want actual government involvement in this sort of thing? Imagine if we did have this kind of involvement in the present Bush Administration? Merde!!

I've not seen any evidence that Gibson is an anti-Semite, other than statements that he is, so I can't speak effectively to that.

As for the suggestion that government deal with beliefs and not actions, how on earth do you do that and maintain liberty? Forced re-education classes? Gulags?

I don't believe (there's that word again :)) that such extremes are necessary. Just as an ingrown toenail doesn't require amputation of a leg to fix it - until you do nothing about it and develop an infection that then becomes gangrenous - so extreme beliefs don't require gulags or forced aversion therapy or secret government drugs or viruses in the drinking water.

I find it interesting that while Europe has exercised moderate control over hate groups, America has not, and is fast becoming a safe haven (and recruitment center) for all manner of nasty antisocial movements. That doesn't mean that all Americans believe that it's OK to be racist, or misogynist, or anti-Semitic, but it does mean that dangerous ideas flourish and prosper instead of withering and dying.

Cue discussion of ID...:)

Boundaries have to be set and maintained, whether in personal or wider social and cultural relationships; the alternative is growing anarchy and marginalisation of groups poorly equipped to defend themselves.

I'm sure you'd agree that anti-Semitism is not to be countenanced. But equally it is pointless to wait until actions are taken and then only deal with the results of the actions and not the beliefs that drove them, otherwise you are forced into an endless loop with no resolution. You keep having to put out the same fires if you don't take steps to remove or reduce the flammables that feed them.

With liberty comes the responsibility to exercise its use with care and consideration for others.

And that's the one thing I noticed above all else when I first came to the US almost exactly eleven years ago - just how close to the edge of anarchy America teeters.

It frequently appears that there are a sizeable number of people here who believe that liberty means the freedom to do and say whatever you like, and to hell with everyone else. (I'm not pointing fingers here - they're too busy typing :))

My favorite analogy (trite thought it might be) is that of a former denizen of the dorm who moves into an apartment complex.

The rules are different and they take some getting used to. You can't, for example, play your music as loud as you like at 3 in the morning. There are residents around you who have to get up early for work and they don't appreciate it, even if they like the same band. There are a whole stack of things you can't do that were OK in the dorm, or seemed to be.

People get tired of having to bang on your door and tell you to turn it down, only to have to do it again half an hour later. And the next night. And the night after that.

So pretty soon they set up a charter of residency, which everyone has to agree to and sign in order to live in the complex. You don't agree, you don't live there.

Among the conditions are no playing music loud so that others can hear it outside your apartment. Notice that it's not "no music to be played ever" - just exercise restraint, enjoy your pleasures, but not at some else's expense. Keep the volume down or wear head- or earphones.

Failure to abide by the agreement leads to a loss of residence - you have to move out (or be evicted).

It's not an extreme solution, but it's a sensible one and it doesn't curtail your liberty, just the manner in which you exercise it. That is, it encourages you to behave responsibly.

Frequently (especially of late) I hear Americans ask "Why does the whole world hate us so much? What did we ever do to them?"

And the answer is simple. The whole world doesn't hate you. But they don't think you exercise your liberty responsibly.

And it's an easy prediction that, increasingly, Americans will find it harder to do abroad what they do at home (a classic example is the trading requirements now for American companies who wish to do business in Europe - they must abide by Data Protection legislation and they don't want to. But that's one of the rules for that particular complex.)

And what's so odd is that, for the most part, Americans are really, really keen not to offend people (well, virtually all of the Americans I've encountered, anyway :)).

They think twice about the words they use, the gestures they make, a whole host of things. In California, for example, which is where I've lived since 1995, people are so polite and so keen to give everyone else their "space" that they put my supposed English politeness to shame. My country comes a poor second when it comes to being nice, by comparison.

It's one of the many reasons I stay here. :)

But it does get a bit puzzling when some folks repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot and then wonder why it hurts so much...

Ancient Brit, it's a difference of philosophy and often comes up on this blog when some europeans make comments similar to yours. It's a battle between liberty and fraternity; two philosophical concepts that have unreconcilable overlap. Fraternity came out of the French revolution and was (I assume) one of the parts rejected by those in the U.S. who were sympathetic to that revolution. Today in the U.S. most people lean towards liberty and do care about fraternity but always side with liberty when the two come into conflict. That definitely describes Ed. In Europe the opposite is true (or mostly so). People do care about liberty, but as you said believe in a sort of responsible use of it. This is why so many have little problems with laws that prohibit particularly vile speech against religious sects. I will say that it seems, at least from the Europeans I've encountered, that you can find more of them who favor liberty than Americans who favor fraternity. But there are those in the U.S. too (some on the far left, mostly).

Personally I think I lean towards liberty like most Americans, but I don't think I lean as hard as some others. In principle I think bigots should be protected to say as they wish, but at the same time I'm not going to make an uproar if a holocaust denier gets into a little bit of trouble. But as far as a drunk Gibson, I see no reason to criminalize his stupidity. As Ed sort of pointed out, what exactly are you going to do to him? He already knows he's got to keep his anti-semiticism muted because of his career. How are you going to prevent it from leaking it out when he's intoxicated? Brainwashing?

Matthew, I think I agree with almost everything you say, but there are perhaps a couple of points worth making, if I may.

One is that liberty and fraternity have a sibling: equality. When I first heard that old wisecrack about America having the best democracy that company money can buy, I thought it was just that - a joke. But a decade of on-the-spot observation has opened my eyes a little. Without equality, liberty becomes something to be enjoyed only by the elite, and of course the fraternity is largely absent. (Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that pretty well, IMHO.)

The kind of social networks I left behind in the UK I have been unable to recreate in the US - there just doesn't seem to be the same attitude that there is in Europe. That's not to say that Americans aren't friendly or generous or charitable - they are, and very much so - but there is a distinct lack of social bonding of the kind that you see in Europe.

It's odd, but American friends of mine who have spent some time in Europe (usually measured in terms of years rather than months or weeks) all say the same thing: the world looks different from outside the shores of the US. They gain a shift in perspective, possibly by in situ exposure to different cultures, and it does seem to change them irrevocably, because when they return to the US they still carry with them that altered perspective - it doesn't revert once they're back home (or so they tell me).

This may well be a product of the environment. Until I came to live in the States I never appreciated how harsh and unforgiving the environment still is; even though the UK has been experiencing severe weather in recent years it's still not a patch on what Americans endure year after year - and regard as "normal". The stereotypical American tourist in Europe can be seen still wearing a sweater in the middle of what we call a hot spell and complaining about the cold and the rain :)

The kind of survival skills necessary to Americans may actually preclude some of the networking that exists in milder climates - who knows? Self-reliance is not so necessary in Europe; indeed, it's looked upon as largely unnecessary when there are so many support mechanisms open to even non-citizens.

Freedom of speech issues crop up frequently in the US - sometimes, to European eyes, irrelevantly. A website that advocates the murder of doctors and other medical staff employed by family planning (or abortion) clinics is allowed to exist here because it's claimed to be a matter of freedom of speech; in Europe, it's black and white: this is no freedom of speech matter, it's incitement to hatred and to commit acts of violence, pure and simple. Whether that is liberty triumphing over fraternity, I don't know, but either way it would be a huge no-no in Jolly Olde Englande.

Another is that from a European perspective America is an incredibly religious country - on a par with many in the Middle East, surprisingly. The number of "believers" as a percentage of the population is much, much higher than in, for example the UK, and the public demonstration of faith is very muted in the UK in comparison with the US. Very few fish symbols on cars, hardly anyone being interviewed by a TV reporter after surviving something horrific and talking about their faith in God and/or angels having kept them alive, for example.

Despite some archaic laws still on the books (for example, police officers in the UK may not go on strike - it is still an act of mutiny against the Crown and still, if I remember correctly, a matter (theoretically) for capital punishment: the death penalty still exists for certain acts under British law), in fact we don't have too much in the way of legislation protecting religious sects from certain acts - you can write as many (accurate) critical articles about them as you like (including the Church of England, although I think there are some dusty laws that still make it a crime to take the Lord's name in vain, even though that's done on a pretty regular basis :))

(I think flying the Union Jack upside down is a matter for hanging, drawing and quartering - unless you're signaling a cry for help in which case it's OK :) Also, the peace sign (two fingers in a V shape) is only acceptable if the hand is facing the right way round. Do it the wrong way (and to add insult to injury, move the two fingers up and down - called flicking the Vs) and you have a major punch-up on your hands. I have no idea why.)

Many Britons regard the US as being the greener grass on the other side of the hill/fence, lacking the necessary first hand experience of the US to be able to realize that they're actually better off where they are. A recent study confirms it: the wealthiest Americans (read: highest social class) enjoy poorer health than the poorest (read: lowest social class) in the UK. The National Health Service is, I'm sure, part of the reason, and the rest may derive from the superior social welfare programs. When I came to the US I had no idea of the levels of fear and anxiety that plague the ordinary citizen, or the lack of universal access to basic health services. I had also never seen so many elderly people limping about with obvious hip and joint damage - it's just too expensive to treat in the US. It's not a place to be and be sick or old or poor.

I once attended a presentation by an administrator from the Veterans Administration, while working for the University of Oxford in England. She presented information that suggested a possible version of socialized medicine that could be made available in the US by simply ramping up the VA's operations (and changing some of the sillier restrictions on operation) that made the per capita cost almost exactly the same as the NHS in the UK - about 4.5% of income with some fairly low cutoff points. Cutting out the middle men and bringing the astronomical medical salaries down would change the face of American medicine for the better - but it's highly unlikely to ever happen because the great American public has already been deeply poisoned against the idea of socialized medicine. Shame really.

Wow, Ancient Brit - so much to respond to. I won't be able to. A few observations:

"When we are on the receiving end of this behavior, we make allowances, because of the circumstances. We know that the person who is screaming a tirade of abuse at us or throwing punches left and right, or telling us they never want to see us again, is not in what we like to call their right frame of mind."

Well, that's just ridiculous. We shouldn't "make allowances". What we do know is that the person is revealing true thoughts and feelings because of a reduced inhibition. And it's the same with alcohol. To say that "it's just the drink talking" is an onerous justification of honest behavior. You're just sweeping aside the plain reality that the drink is lowering personal restraint, and the person is simply talking more freely.

"It's a piece of common knowledge about an effect that crosses many boundaries - financial, cultural, racial, social, you name it. It doesn't matter who you are, when you're drunk you are not yourself."

You have it exactly backwards. When you are drunk you are yourself, more truthfully than you would normally care to be.

Why add to his already heavy burden by attributing characteristics to him that you must know are solely the result of drunkenness?

Does "drunkenness" carry it's own prejudices and hate? All of your statements tell me that you believe that alcohol and stress literally create beliefs that the person doesn't actually hold. That's just bull.

It's quite simple:
1. The beliefs are already there, even subconscious prejudices, fears, and anger.
2. Sober decorum allows us to behave in a civilized way and essentially hide the true character of many of our beliefs, even from ourselves.
3. Stress and alcohol disrupt our ability to hold that facade together. Not only does our behavior tumble outside the norms of normal discourse, but the values and beliefs held by us are more plainly revealed. Later we can say it even horrified ourselves. But the truth is laid bare.

The alcohol does not conjure up some sort of demonic spirit or force outside the person's own personality; It merely changes the presentation. The alcohol can not in any sense be "solely" responsible for anything.

Actually, now, I'll just skip most of the rest of your comments, with the exception of this one:

And that's the one thing I noticed above all else when I first came to the US almost exactly eleven years ago - just how close to the edge of anarchy America teeters.

So, are we any closer to anarchy now, or did we miraculously pull back from the precipice? Or, perhaps was that a mistaken impression based on a kind of Euro-fear of Americans' commitment to personal liberties?

In the same comment you express your puzzlement that "people are so polite [in California] and so keen to give everyone else their 'space' that they put my supposed English politeness to shame."

Well? Wouldn't that indicate that indeed people accept the responsibilities that come along with their liberties? I don't get the impression that it's Big Brother or the Thought Police that makes everyone so polite.