Gibson's ugly rant was classic anti-Semitism

WASHINGTON — Let's not cut Mel Gibson even the tiniest bit of slack over the ugly tirade he inflicted on the sheriff's deputy who pulled him over in his Lexus as he roared drunkenly down the Pacific Coast Highway at nearly twice the speed limit.

If anyone missed the story over the weekend, although I don't know how that would be possible, Gibson was obnoxious, belligerent and self-important when the arresting officer pulled him over. In other words, just your average traffic stop in Malibu — until Gibson proceeded to blame the ills and injustices of the world, presumably including his own immediate predicament, on the Jews.

"(Expletive) Jews," Gibson said, according to a copy of the arrest report posted on the entertainment news Web site TMZ.com and later confirmed by the Los Angeles Times. "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." To the officer, he demanded: "Are you a Jew?"

Gibson's defense is one of diminished capacity. He admitted in a statement released Saturday that he had been drinking that evening and shouldn't have been driving. He "profoundly" regrets his "horrific relapse" into the "disease of alcoholism," Gibson said. "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."

Well, I'm sorry about his relapse, too, but I just don't buy the idea that a little tequila, or even a lot of tequila, can somehow turn an unbiased person into a raging anti-Semite — or a racist, or a homophobe, or a bigot of any kind, for that matter. Alcohol removes inhibitions, allowing all kinds of opinions to escape uncensored. But you can't blame alcohol for forming and nurturing those opinions in the first place.

Gibson's rant sounds to me like classic anti-Semitism that goes beyond the country-club "not our sort of people" brand of casual bigotry. He seems well on the way toward some sort of full-blown "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" conspiracy theory of Jewish world domination. If you were in Gibson's situation, no matter how inebriated or embarrassed, I doubt your first question would be whether the cop who pulled you over was a Jew. I hope not, at least.

You will recall that when Gibson's epic film "The Passion of the Christ" was criticized by some viewers for portraying Jews as scheming, hook-nosed stereotypes, Gibson replied that he was only seeking historical accuracy. You'll also recall that when asked about his father's claim that the Holocaust was mostly "fiction," Gibson acknowledged that some Jews did die in concentration camps but stopped short of directly repudiating dear old Dad.