Ok, after reading this I'm wondering if it's time to dig up his back yard to see if there are any dead hooker remains (assuming the claims in the article are true): Mel the prankster Honestly, the only one of those "pranks" that came across to me as potentially funny was the dining one; the rest come across as assholish to mentally disturbed. And the fact that all his victims were women save the last, I mean what the fuck is wrong with this guy?
All the "news" about this is a scary show of how utterly fucked up and misogynistic our culture still is. What I'm reading is that she went to the dentist with cracked and broken teeth, a bruised face and a cut lip, and when asked, she told him that Mel punched her in the mouth. When the dentist was questioned about it, he said that he saw nothing consistent with a punch to the mouth, but it looked to him as though she'd clearly been punched in the temple, hard enough that her mouth slammed shut on impact, breaking her teeth and cutting her lip. In that scenario, he said, the wounds were exactly what one would expect to see. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this is not a person who has been punched in the face many times in her life. Maybe that's assuming too much for some people, but fuck it. So, a man twice her size punches her in the side of the head hard enough to break two of her teeth and cut her lip, and she thought she'd been punched in the mouth. If you've ever been punched unexpectedly in the face, then you know how easy it would be to not know exactly where the punch landed, especially if you've never been punched and it did considerable damage to another part of your face. So because she said, "mouth," and not, "temple," I saw a half dozen headlines yesterday saying that she's lying about what happened, and that maybe she made the whole thing up. That conniving bitch.
Clearly, despite the fact that she possibly is/was a gold digger, Mel has become severely imbalanced over the years. That cannot be disputed after hearing the shit he said on those tapes. It doesn't matter if they were doctored or not or if she pushed his buttons or not. He's become as loony as any deranged psychopath and desperately needs A LOT of medication. I suggest a nice combination of Haldol and Thorazine, possibly mixed with a shot of Zyprexa. I find this whole fiasco is very disappointing because I always admired the man, especially after his performance in Hamlet. His acting in that movie was fantastic and it's in my top 10 performances of all time. I will still enjoy his movies because without his insanity, like many talented people, he probably would not have been as good an artist as he was, but it just doesn't make sense for someone who had so much to have gone so completely over the edge, at least to me anyway. I wonder if Dr. Rob or someone else with some mental health background could weigh in on the possible psychology behind this obvious breakdown.
When I think of Mel Gibson, the first thing that springs to mind is this: And now, back to your regularly scheduled discussion.
Apparently he’s moving back to Aus and getting back with his wife. I thought we had stopped receiving criminal imports years ago.
Great. He will fit in perfectly with the large population of backwards racists that inhabit this country. He just needs to learn how to redirect his hatred away from blacks & Jews and towards lebs, boat people and Aborigines and all the bogans will leave their houseos and mcmansions, TABs and pokie rooms, pubs & RSLs and give him a hero's welcome. With his CV he will wind up as our first president yieeeeeeeeew
Not if we follow the American model. He wasn't born here. Is it too late to organise a welcoming committee of "Make Mad Max 4 and then fuck off"?
Who cares? I'm on vacation, which means I am watching television for the first time this year, and at any given moment, half the news channels are covering this "story" (I use the term loosely). With all the fucking problems going on right now, (riots in Oakland, the economy going back to shit, new banking and home sales taxes courtesy of our fine administration, rampant corruption in California under Boxer and her cronies) everyone is concerned that some celebrity yelled at his girlfriend over the phone? Fucking really? Mel Gibson was/is a very good actor, and a decent director. Until/unless he does something truly horrible, like rape a child (Roman Polanski), my feelings about that won't change, and I won't mind paying for his movies. (Do you have any idea how many of your/my favorite musicians/writers/directors are poor human beings?)
Most celebrities are poor human beings? More like most human beings are poor human beings. But especially Jews.
Come on! Just look at the merry prankster. A few random punches, a couple of racist tirades .. maybe a few psychotic rants - It's all in good fun. You can't hate that guy, you just can't.
I think Mel Gibson probably has a substance abuse problem, I'm leaning strongly on alcohol, and definite anger issues. Mixing anger issues and alcohol together can produce some pretty explosive results. Obviously it's impossible to tell without actually knowing the man but I've heard rants like his before from a family member that has been in and out of rehab. You'll never hear these people say mean or racist things when they're sober but once they've been drinking it's becomes a different story. If they get it in their heads that something is wrong and that yelling will fix it you'll basically hear them scream the meanest things that they can come up with. A lot of times it's racial epithets and profanity.
I have to agree with KImaster on this one. I couldn't give two shits what Mel does unless it crosses a line in the sand. There is obviously from what I've read some doctoring in the tapes to make it appear much worse than it is (not that its not bad). But Mel Gibson has never purported to be a role model or someone that marks himself as anyone's moral compass. He makes fucking movies. If I want someone to follow I'll look to someone around me or heaven forbid my own moral compass. This fascination we have with people who are under a microscope because of their chosen profession and how we look for them to brighten our lives and are so so disappointed with their ability to reflect the ugly in us us amazing. I have had some girlfriends say some crazy shit to me that made me think to myself, 'Huh. Maybe Sean Connery had it right and I need to just slap a bitch." Among friends and in my head I have said some seriously racist, sexist, misogynistic, angry shit. Who doesn't rant or have preconceived notions about people and things we either don't understand, fear or scapegoat for our lack of understanding about issues too large for us to comprehend at that moment. I'm not excusing this guy, but fuck em. Ima still watch Mad Max and be entertained. I'm still gonna watch Payback and root for the bad guy. I'm still gonna avoid Passion of the Christ for the turd that it is. Because I don't want a fucking role model. I want to be entertained.
What suprised me more than anything is that this article in The Age (Melbourne - Australia) was written by a woman. Another day, another Mel Gibson rant is released on the internet. On Tuesday came the sixth and perhaps most pathetic tape purportedly of a phone call between the 54-year-old star and his Russian ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his eighth child. ''You f------ offend my f------ maleness, my masculinity, my being, my soul! … You have my child and she doesn't need a gold digging, f------ Russian c---, whore for a mother! If you get raped it's your fault, for starters. Showing off your fake tits! Like they're some special deal? How much did they cost, those fakers?'' The mercilessness of the internet is on display like never before. As Radar Online continues its slow drip of segments of the recorded conversations while the custody battle over Gibson's and Grigorieva's infant daughter Lucia goes on in a Los Angeles court, you wonder how much worse they can get. Expletive-laden, spittle-littered, unhinged, enraged, his familiar voice is awful to hear. But Grigorieva's cool entrapment is as bad. He has given into frightening narcissistic rage and self-pity, becoming a pathetic object of contempt and perhaps pity. She is infuriatingly self-righteous, and calculating. It is war between the sexes at its worst, both sides using their lowest weapons. "I'm threatening, I'll put you in a f------ rose garden, you c---," he tells her. "You understand that? 'Cause I'm capable of it." She is unruffled. "One day you're going to answer, boy you're going to answer," she taunts him. Is he ever, now, as police in California investigate Grigorieva's claims he hit her and threatened her and the baby with a gun, and photos of her with two chipped front teeth appear online. Gibson has been terminally shunned by Hollywood, pilloried by celebrity media from The New York Times to Perez Hilton, dropped by his agency and basically hounded out of the US, with reports last week, since denied by his spokesman, that he plans to move back to Australia. In a world hungry for extreme reality, Mel's meltdown is right on cue, with much more promised by Radar Online. It is a cruel new world, where private pain, psychological frailty and domestic disputes become the entertainment fodder of millions. But given the nature of digital media it would be difficult to conceive of a situation where such a tape could be suppressed, and maybe it shouldn't be. After all, Gibson's downfall is a salutary tale for ageing Lotharios. The curse of the gold-digger is as old as humanity, yet men keep falling for it. In a week in which Bob Hawke has boasted with impunity about his serial adultery in The Lodge as if it's something to be proud of, his grinning former mistress by his side, you can see the disintegration of Gibson after the breakdown of his 29-year marriage as a sign of adultery's less forgiving price. The tapes show Gibson in those moments of realisation that the girl of his dreams, who made him feel young and vibrant and lusty again, was a piece of work. He was ripped off. He gave up his most valuable asset for her, his marriage to Robyn, the source of his strength and the sole protector of his reputation. There are moments in the phone call when the penny drops for Mel: "I spent more than $5 million on you! … You're f------ gouging me. You! Used me … You f------ used me … I know absolutely that you do not love me … I left my wife because we had no spiritual common ground. You and I have none! Zero! You won't even f------ try. You don't care. You don't care … You insult me with every look, (garbled) every f------ heartbeat you selfish harpy … I need a woman! Not a f------ little girl … I need someone who treats me like a man, like a human being. With kindness. The last three years have been a f------ gravy train for you … you're a liar, you're dishonest, and you're f----- up … I just need a nice woman to look after my beautiful daughter." While Gibson's language and physical violence - if true - are indefensible, nevertheless there is deep hypocrisy at work in the reaction to the tapes. His vile language and racist slurs deserve the strongest censure. But how are they worse than Roman Polanski's drugging and anally raping a 13-year-old girl that has been proven in a court of law and for which he has escaped punishment for 30 years while being feted around the world and sheltered by European arts lovers? Why is it OK for Whoopi Goldberg to defend Polanski but it's not OK for her to say she knows Gibson, and he's not a racist? Is Mel's rant worse than Alec Baldwin's taped menace of his 14-year-old daughter Ireland, who he threatened and called a ''little pig''? Baldwin had barely time for contrition before he was being showered with awards. What about Charlie Sheen's domestic violence? Or any number of cover-ups of child abuse and domestic violence in Hollywood? As long as you share the Hollywood establishment's progressive politics you will be forgiven anything. But not ''Octomel'', who for so long represented an impossible ideal for Hollywood with all its temptations, money and focus on the superficial, that it was possible to be happily married with seven children, to remain a devout Catholic, albeit with some kooky beliefs. He made The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, panned by the inner sanctum, but both movies were so successful he earned enough to survive without the support of Hollywood's cultural tsars. His refusal to conform was a threat to their comfortable assumptions, power and influence, their progressive politics and amorality, their sense of invulnerability and entitlement. Now he has fallen prey to a gold-digger and seemingly lost his mind, there is no sympathy, just a gleeful savaging of the corpse. Gibson's bipolar disorder and alcoholism are on full display in his rants, but the only person who cares to defend him is the wife he betrayed, who provided a statement to court that he never physically abused her. Which tells you something about the enduring salvation benefits for men, at least, of marriage, and probably a lot more about the saintliness of Robyn Gibson.
It's like Network and Natural Born killers had an acid tab baby and it is all coming true. The fact that Radaronline is leaking this material week to week for maximum possible site exposure is almost as diabolical as anything I have ever seen. I really expected an uproar over their tactics by someone but it seems we as a society either enjoy this or are just complicit enough not to say anything. I have a feeling you are right about his non compliance with the progressive norms of Hollywood as a factor as why there is no outrage at Radaronline or the media not trying to keep it a "private matter." I have a hard time seeing the media pulling the same shit if it were say Tim Robbins.
I think "society" is reaching a point where alot of people (myself incuded) experience a quiet satisfaction or even just plain old Schadenfreude when the lives of those that the Media and Marketing machine once held up in esteem (either validly or otherwise) comes crashing and burning down in one big ugly mess.
Honestly, I think that those tapes do a couple of things. 1) They help Gibson, in that he's no longer just a racist and misogynist, he's instead perceived or transformed into being batshit insane. He's now someone you feel pity towards, not anger or distaste. He's not someone to pick on and hate, but someone who needs help. 2) I really do think that there is some element of her trying to set him up and get some gains from the situation. The tapes that have been released show that she obviously put some thought into the statements she made in them, for future use in court, and I have a hard time believing that she would be that calm naturally. It's not a stretch of the imagination for me to imagine what she may have done off-tape to make him that batshit insane. Initially, I was scoring this thing as 90% Gibson being a dick and in the wrong, but now I get the impression it's more 50-50. There is no doubt in my mind that she could be a complete bitch that could drive someone that insane.
The Last Psychiatrist's take on the situation I believe we're predisposed to think Gibson is mentally unstable by virtue of his earlier outbursts about Jews, etc., which have only been compounded by this scandal, but racism and bigotry do not a crazy person make. Domestic violence is also not necessarily an indication of mental instability. When you hear about a man hitting a woman, is your initial assessment of the situation, "Oh, he must be insane. No sane person would do that"? I doubt it. If anything, as Nettdata said, labeling an abuser as such makes him less culpable for his behavior. Plenty of men who hit women are clinically sane. They're certainly fucking assholes, but are still quite aware of the consequences of their actions; a leprechaun isn't telling them to smack their wives in the mouth. Furthermore, as TLP points out in the article, these verbal exchanges aren't uncommon. If you haven't been in an argument with a S.O. where you both said brutal, horrible things to each other, you know people who have. Does it make you or them 'crazy'? Again, I doubt it. It might sound crazy on a tape listened to by strangers who have no context for the argument, but that's not evidence. That's guesswork. I'm not trying to excuse Gibson, because he clearly has some stuff he's got to work out, but let's try to remember that any news we receive about any given celebrity outburst is being filtered through legions of publicists, journalists, editors and anonymous sources that are not ever accountable to the entire truth. This is one in a long line of scandals that offer a chance to tsk tsk someone while only possessing thin slices of carefully engineered information. This indignation toward Gibson is, frankly, fucking retarded, and more a reflection of our own ethical insecurity than his shortcomings as a husband. Not feeling so hot about the way you treated your last girlfriend? At least you're not Mel. Yelled at your wife last night? Could be worse; you could be Mel. At this point, he's a convenient moral yardstick for a country full of people in shitty relationships, which is so far beyond sad that it can't be measured.