Posted on 07/29/2006 1:51:47 PM PDT by LdSentinal
The following is the complete text of Mel Gibson's statement regarding his arrest for investigation of driving under the influence of alcohol:
"After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the L.A. County sheriffs. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person.
"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. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said.
"Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the deputies involved for my belligerent behavior. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry.
"I have battled the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health."
Did you know that Mel was born in New York, I believe Poughkeepsie, and his Father won $20,000 on JEOPARDY which he used to move his family to Australia?
Apology accepted!!! :)
That's funny--I was born in Po'k!
Sure it wasn't Peekskill?
Yea..that's it...Poughkeepsie, Peekskill...it's all the same once you leave NY!!!!!
You were born in Poughkeepsie...do you live there still?
No, I live up the road in beautiful Rhinebeck, NY, but I still work here. The Hudson Valley is a sceneically gorgeous area, and I really like having four seasons that run the gamut from real hot to real cold.
Great points! I am appalled however, that a conservative Catholic newspaper that somebody picked up at St. Agnes in NYC also went for the "Jewish cabal" garbage that Harvard is putting out. The extreme right joins with the extreme hate in its hatred of Jews. That is the one thing that unites them. Some paleo conservatives - like Pat Buchanan are very close to being neo-nazis. Cindy Sheehan is a sick deluded twit who needs help. She spits on her son's grave and is an ignoramus to boot. U.S. occupied New Orleans?????
Yep. I think the difference is the Dems put their nuttier lefists up for general election (Kerry's record the last time out was one of the two or three most liberal in the senate). Howard Dean had a real shot.
Pat Buchanan hasn't been presidential timber for quite awhile.
The rabid energy has been on the left--and unlike the rabid right, it gets a media pass (or active help).
You are correct - absolutely correct. However, we should clean house. When Buchanan left the GOP, John McCain remarked "Kick him out and close the door!" Of course, the Dems wouldn't dare kick out Cynthia McKinney or Al Sharpton - or wacko Jim McDermott: they are the BASE OF THE PARTY NOW! John Dingle (Dingleberry) is another wack job who sympathizes with terrorists. It is a long list of terror loving/anti-Semitic Democrats. And I saw a photo of Howard Dean wearing a kafiyah or whatever the Pallies call it. I am not going to beat up on Gibson any more - he has done himself enough damage. When the Dems pander, they like to point out that they had a Jewish grandmother somewhere along the line and they expect us to be rapturous about this. I am not fooled by them. Not one bit.
In case anybody missed it, here is the script from the "South Park" episode entitled "The Passion of the Jew."
The creators Parker and Stone (featured in the book "South Park Conservatives"), saw this Mel Gibson train wreck coming years ago. I think everyone will get a huge laugh out of it. The characters are cardboard cutouts so in just reading the script you won't miss anything.
http://www.spscriptorium.com/ScriptGuideIndex.htm
Here's the summary:
Cartman abuses his Jewish friend Kyle, telling him that Jews killed Christ:
Cartman: Agh! You see guys, this is why you don't bring Jews along on the away team: they don't play along!
Kyle: Shut up about Jews, fatass! You don't know anything!
Stan: Oh God, here we go again.
Cartman: Oh yeah?! I saw Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion, and Mel Gibson says, in the movie, Jews are the Devil!
Kyle: He does not!
Cartman: How do you know?! I've seen The Passion thirty-four times now, Kyle! You haven't seen it once! There's even one part where the Jews have a chance to save Jesus, and you know what they do? They let Barabbas, a serial killer, go free instead and laugh about it.
When they boys go to see it, Kyle throws up in the theater, but the other 2 think the movie stinks and want their money back:
Stan: That movie sucked ass. Give us back our eighteen dollars.
Shlomo: I can't refund your money. You sat through the whole movie.
Stan: That wasn't a movie, that was a snuff film!
Kenny: (Yeah!)
Stan: You can't charge people to watch a guy get tortured for two hours!
Shlomo: That guy happened to be Jesus, and he went through all that to pay for YOUR SINS!
Stan: We go to church to learn that stuff! We go to movies to be entertained! We weren't entertained, and we want our money back!
Shlomo: I'm now allowed to give you your money back after you sat through the whole movie! You'd have to take your complaint up with the film's producers.
Stan: W-what? Mel Gibson? You're saying we have to get our money back from Mel Gibson?
Shlomo: Yeah. I'd like to see you try.
Stan: Oh, we will! This is America! And in America, if something sucks, you're supposed to be able to get your money back! Come on, Kenny! [he and Kenny storm off]
They go to California to see Gibson and ask for their money back, and find a wacked out lunatic Gibson. They take their $18 out if his wallet only to have him chase them down:
Jack: H-he's not... quite as eloquent as I had pictured.
Mel: [backs up towards a building] Yeah... [grabs a piece of crap from his ass and removes it from his briefs, turns around, and defaces the building] Well. I guess you wanna torture me now, don't you?!
Kyle: [joins Stan and Kenny] Dude, what's wrong with him?
Stan: He's kookoo, dude. He's absolutely out of his mind.
Mel: You! You would all love to torture me, wouldn't you? [gets down on all fours and hoists his ass up] Okay, fine. See what you can fit in there, I can take it!
Kyle: Dude! I've been freaked out this whole time because of THAT guy's movie?
Mel: [rises and walks up to the boys] Fine! If nobody here is man enough to torture me, then just give me my eighteen dollars!
Stan: It's our eighteen dollars! Your movie sucked!
Mel: You can't say my movie sucked, or else you're saying Christianity sucked!
Stan: No, dude, if you wanna be Christian, that's cool, but, you should follow what Jesus taught instead of how he got killed. Focusing on how he got killed is what people did in the Dark Ages and it ends up with really bad results.
In the meantime, Cartman organizes the neo-Nazi brigade to target Jews, under the guise of a Mel Gibson "Passion" fan club:
Yeah, Howard Dean said during the 2004 campaign "it's not our place to take sides" with regard to Israel's battles. We needed an "evenhanded" approach in the region. His comments. So I suppose he'd be neutral on Hezbollah.
I don't know. Maybe that's better than how much of the rest of the world is reacting (loads of sympathy that is essentially thinly dsiguised pro-Hezbollah propaganda)
As MacDonald points out, Mark provided an important clue to his readers that his story was fictional which no one could miss: he called the prisoner "Barabbas." Barabbas means "the son of the father" 1. Thus, Mark has Pilate set up a contest between two "sons of the father", one real, the other not. Of course, this unlikely contest probably only took place in the creative imagination of Mark, who wanted to create for his readers a parable teaching the goodness of Jesus and the evilness of his persecutors.
An Unlikely Practice
MacDonald notes that there is no evidence independent of Mark that it was ever the custom at feasts for the Romans to release a prisoner requested by the Jews. Furthermore, such a practice would make no sense, and would be quite foolish: it's not likely, for example, that the Romans would release a prisoner accused of murdering soldiers. Thus, this "practice" of releasing a prisoner probably existed only in the imagination of Mark, who just needed to have two men to have a contest between one good man and a bad one, similar to the one which occurred in Homer; Mark already had the first man on the stage--Jesus, and through an artless contrivance he brought on the second one
Well, Christmas, great as it is, isn't the most important Holiday on the Christian calendar. That's reserved for Easter Week--Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That would be the death and ressurection of Christ.
Meditating on Christ's rejection by men and death, is directly related to his teachings. His first and greatest commandment was “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Rejecting God is the essense of sin we all engage in. It represents the opposite of Christ's teaching. And it was embodied not only by the rejection and death of Christ, but by the utterly cruel and depraved way he was rejected. That is the twisted heart of sin.
No, once in awhile I'll tune into Trey & Matt for a few laughs. But not for theological or historical insight.
I always suspected that this story did not take place and is meant as a parable. However, it has been used through the ages to cast aspersions upon Jews. I don't believe that any historian mentions a Bar-Abbas.
Fair enough. But I think the point is that Jesus taught and preached some very important lessons in his limited number of years of ministry as a rabbi.
We should be listening to his wisdom and what he said 2,000 years ago, not antagonizing others with a "snuff film" about his horrible death.
Sure he was the most important man who ever lived (whether you believe he is the son of God or not), but hundreds of thousands of people were crucified under Roman rule. Their death and torture were equally brutal.
Torture and capital punishment still goes on today. I'm far from being a bleeding heart liberal so I'm not crying about terrorists being woken from their nap or hardened criminals getting the chair, but...
Everyone regardless of whether they are Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, agnostics could learn something from Jesus' wise words. Parker and Stone were simply saying that should be the message and not a bloody horror flick that incites hatred.
Fair enough. But proof is in the pudding, and conservative Christians (who saw the movie in droves and approved) have been staunch supporters of Israel and people of Jewish faith in America.
A poisonous mixture Muslim fundamentalism, extreme Arab nationalism and blame America leftists here, in Europe, and the Middle East are the root of the current problem.
It's interesting that Pope John Paul II mentioned Barabbas in this way on Good Friday, 1998, speaking about responsibility for the death of Jesus:
"Oh no, not the Jewish people, crucified by us [Christians] for so long, not the crowd which will always prefer Barabbas because he repays evil with evil, not them, but all of us, each one of us, because we are all murderers of love."
http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/resources/education/magisterium_crucifixion.htm
Your points are dead on accurate. But with all due respect (please explain because I don't get it) I'm not sure what Mel Gibson or the "Passion" has to do with mideast peace.
To add to your observations though, it's true that Arab nationalism is an issue. I have an insiders view on this one. They haven't gotten over the fact that they lost the wars against Israel in 1967 and 1973. They can't simply take pride in the fact that they fought as a legitimate, brave Army and gave it their best shot...and got their butts kicked.
It happens. Heck, the USA lost in Vietnam. The Soviets lost in Afganistan. The Nazi's and imperial Japan lost WWII. Fair and square.
Get over it and move on. They won't let it go.
Imagine if Japan and Germany refused to admit defeat 60 years ago. They would still be outlaw regimes today instead of selling Honda's and Benz's around the world and living in peace in productive peaceful countries.
Your other point, about the left and the Jewish vote has been a mystery to me for some time. It's a source of debate for me and my very close Jewish friends. I still don't understand why Jews continue to vote predominantly for liberal left wing Democrats.
Their explanation, and it is plausible, is that it doesn't matter who is in the White House or Congress, they will support Israel regardless. I guess they have other issues to consider.
Well, I think Dem support for Israel will be tepid and rhetorical if, say, the reborn rad Al Gore somehow makes it into the White House.
As for Japan and Germany, they had no choice about accpting Allied Victory. The only victory we would accept was complete and unconditional. And we literally pulverized them, including inflicting enormous damage on huge numbers of civilians, until they were totally and ruiniously defeated.
My point about Gibson/The Passion is simply that the movie did not increase or produce a negative climate for Jews among its audience--the conservative Christians who supported and saw the movie.
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