Posted on 08/05/2006 7:13:19 PM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
by Mark Finkelstein
August 5, 2006 - 21:57
Neal Gabler might not look like an athlete, but don't be surprised to see him lining up for the long jump at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. For on this evening's Fox News Watch, Neal took a leap of logic of Beamonesque proportions.
According to Gabler, the fact that a drunken Gibson made anti-Semitic remarks retroactively proves that his 'Passion of the Christ' was anti-Semitic too.
Here's how the liberal media critic put it:
"The interest here is 'The Passion.' It made something like $400 million. It was accused of being anti-Semitic. The mainstream press didn't really want to touch it. Because they were afraid of being clobbered from the right. Now Mel Gibson has outed himself. And it gives the mainstream press an opportunity - not just to focus on the fact that Mel Gibson was drunk and said anti-Semitic remarks - but that The Passion itself was anti-Semitic. That Mel Gibson has a pattern of anti-Semitism. And that's what makes it a story."
Or at least, a story line that Gabler devoutly hopes the MSM will pursue.
Fox News Watch/NewsBusters Passion-of-the-Christ ping to Today show list.
This is absurd, all it proves is that Gibson, the man who made the Passion film, is anti-Semitic. Anything else is simply stretching the logic.
I have to agree.
To liberals, The Passion is like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg - it must be fought for all eternity and any excuse will do.
Gabler is an idiot..
Gabler is a perfect idiot.
I've never kept love for any celebrity. While some find this SHOCKING, it is good to be immune. One must rise above.
Gabler is in dire need of a brain transplant.
Well, as time has gone on it becomes more and more apparent what all of the horror over Mel's remarks was really about. I didn't see this when Hillary made her comment about Jewish people, nor when Brando made his.
susie
Why is that commie dwarf on the Fox payroll?
Huge sums are raised yearly from Jews to fight antisemitism. IMHO the problem is antisemitism is the only real "Jewishness" that many nonobservant Jews have. Approximately half of all nonobservant Jewish men marry gentiles. The result is "Jewishness" needs some boundary to defend--antisemitism is perfect for this.
Neil Gabler is the patron saint of all idiots.
Neil Gabler is an idiots idiot.
Neil Gabler defines idiocy.
Idiot thy name is Neil Gabler
I could go on and on actually. I'm always impressed that Cal Thomas (or Rich Lowry) can sit that close to Gabler and not pummel that raging idiot.
Doesn't even prove that. Look at how the American secular Jews attacked his movie "the Passion," consider (subsequently) what he might have encountered earlier that evening (and forgotten) out&about in a local frequented by (secular, liberal, and highly anti-Gibson) Jews... you've got no proof here. Evidence, certainly, but proof? No.
He's made a decent apology. (Did we ever get the equivalent from Clinton? I do not think so.) But this is politics and not polite society; the Left will never let go of this.
Great analogy, eggman. Neil Gabler, the "self-appointed media critic"... ( Who ever heard of him before he was on this show... and that tired dribble-puss Jane Hall (someone give this hag a bib) are sooo over... I'd like to tell Neil where he can stick that finger he's always holding up to the camera.
Nam Vet
P.S. See tagline
Neal Gabler is a leftwingnut. He's just trying to divert our attention from the Democrat's embrace of virulent anti-semitism.
I'm rather curious about the Holocaust show that Gibson was working on. I'm having a lot of trouble believing they were funding an anti Semitic Holocaust flick.
I would be thrilled to get a face to face with that metrosexual twit and b#tch slap him intellectually in a way that nobody on TV feels appropriate to do.
And that means what, exactly, Mr. Gabler? Are you going to go house to house and collect every dvd that exists?
That toothpaste isn't going back into the tube.
Pinz
Nobody's perfect.
I prefer to think of Neal Gabler as a cartoon character, who plays the same role as a bad guy in professional wrestling, or Yosemite Sam.
Except that Yosemite Sam is lovable.
By the way, my favorite Passion film is Ben Hur, starring Ramon Navarro (1925).
Typical lefty - always fighting last year's battle - another compelling reason for not letting them get control of the government......
And for FReepers, to be discussed for all eternity and any excuse will do.
Meanwhile, Gabler's kids were overheard saying:
We can pick our noses, too bad we couldn't pick our dad.
I notice that the MSM makes much about Mel's untimely comments.
They call him anti-semitic, but they don't talk about what he actually said, and the circumstances it was said in.
The cop who pulled him over was Jewish.
I imagine had the cop been black, Mr. Gibson might have made some anti-negro remarks. Alcohol has a way of making you brave, uninhibited, and stupid, all at once.
Although we humans usually have our prejudices well hidden, different things can make them come out.
What Mel said was something that he would likely never say if not drunk, and I imagine he was attacking the cop personally because the cop was attacking him personally by pulling him over and arresting him for DUI.
Now, I have not see this particular reporter write a column declaring the nutjob in Iran an anti-semitic, even though that person said that Israelites must be removed from the face of the earth.
And I haven't seen that reporter write any columns about how well the IDF is doing against the Hezb'allah, or how great Coalition forces are doing against the terrorists.
And he should. Going by the name I would say the reporter is Jewish.
Gibson's only problem is a poor choice of friends, who would allow him to drive drunk, and perhaps the early stages of simple, banal and garden variety alcoholism, which far from the plain myth of bringing out "the truth about what a person believes," almost always, when confronted, aims outward for excuses for personal irresponsibility.
The shame of it is that fact that Gabler, liberal Banshee that he is, has to his credit a really interesting and scholarly book about the role of entertainment and the cult of celebrity that I am now reading for the second time. I would still highly recommend Life: The Movie, How Entertainment Conquered Reality as a wonderful American history of the Cult of the Celebrity and how Entertainment has become "the coin of the realm."
If only he could keep his ill-informed ideas about the behavior of alcoholics and potential alcoholics as much to himself as he managed to lighten his rare cheap shots at Conservatives in that great book!
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