Category: In the News

An actual photo of Mel Gibson, who now resembles Saddam Hussein physically and not just in terms of anti-Semitism, taken during an interview in Mexico.

Another chapter got added to Mel Gibson’s downward slide from indie film hero to real-life Eric Cartman with an uncanny resemblance to Saddam Hussein on Thursday. He was arrested while on the Pacific Coast Highway, where he was doing 87 m.p.h. in a 45 m.p.h. zone and soon discovered to also be doing 0.12% blood alcohol content in a 0.08% zone. The ensuing arrest went from bad — Gibson’s lamenting “My life is fucked” — to worse, with Gibson attempting to bolt back to his car and then threatening to end an arresting officer’s career. It went from worse to cartoonish, with his confronting a femal police officer with “What are you looking at, sugar tits?” to asking an officer if he was Jewish and uttering the now-infamous line: “asked the officer if he was Jewish and stated that “fucking Jews…The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

Photo borrowed from Mel’s Musings.

Mel’s drunken rants are a radical departure from what he said in an interview with the Daily Variety in 2003:

“If the intense scrutiny during my 25 years in public life revealed I had ever persecuted or discriminated against anyone based on race or creed, I would be all too willing to make amends. But there is no such record.

“Nor do I hate anybody — certainly not the Jews…They are my friends and associates, both in my work and social life. Thankfully, treasured friendships forged over decades are not easily shaken by nasty innuendo.

“Anti-Semitism is not only contrary to my personal beliefs, it is also contrary to the core message of my movie…For those concerned about the content of this film, know that it conforms to the narratives of Christ’s passion and death found in the four Gospels of the New Testament…This is a movie about faith, hope, love and forgiveness — something sorely needed in these turbulent times.”

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over Mel’s statements, with some people commenting on various internet forums that he shouldn’t be held accountable for what he said since he was drunk. Perhaps these people don’t get out much, or perhaps they haven’t heard the old Latin maxim: In vino veritas. News flash, people: There’s a reason that some of us who’ve worked in the bar-and-tavern trade refer to Mike’s Hard Lemonade as “sodium pentathol“. Nothing “opens the vault” like a little booze, especially when you don’t have a publicist, handler or even a friend with good judgement there to tell you to zip it.

It’s another case of the South Park guys being on the money (see the episode titled The Passion of the Jew, in which Mel Gibson is portrayed as completely bonkers with masochist tendencies). It’s tough to be a satirist these days when the real world keeps trumping you.

A scene from the South Park episode, The Passion of the Jew. Click the image to see the scene on YouTube.

Next: Mel’s Dad, his apology and how the South Park guys were right on not one, but two counts.

Ken Jennings, the winningest contestant on Jeopardy!, gaves the show a little tough love on his blog, saying that it needs a serious reworking.

For starters, it just doesn’t mesh with his meat-and-potatoes, guy-from-Utah values:

First up, the categories. Maybe when Art Fleming was alive, America just couldn’t get enough clues about “Botany” and “Ballet” and “The Renaissance,” but come on. Does every freaking category have to be some effete left-coast crap nobody’s heard of, like “Opera,” or, um, “U.S. History” or whatever? I mean, wake me up when you come up with something that middle America actually cares about. I think it would rule if, just one time, Alex had to read off a board like:

• PlayStation
• The Arby’s 5-for-$5.95 Value Menu
• Reality TV
• Men’s Magazines
• Skanks from Reality TV Who Got Naked in Men’s Magazines
• Potpourri

He also brings up the issue of “sound body, sound mind”:

…why are there no physical challenges? It doesn’t have to be Nickelodeon déclassé, buckets of green ooze falling from the ceiling. It could be tasteful and restrained. Like, if you know the answer, you have to run from your podium to the gameboard, jump up to touch the clue in question, and give the answer. “What is an Arby-Q?” Then you run back to your podium to select again. Some of these contestants, frankly, could use the exercise. Oh, also, there are angry bees.

And finally, he addresses the really big issue: that Alex Trebek is in fact, an android:

Finally, Alex. I know, I know, the old folks love him. Nobody knows he died in that fiery truck crash a few years back and was immediately replaced with the Trebektron 4000 (I see your engineers still can’t get the mustache right, by the way.)

Whether you agree with him and think that Jeopardy! is an aging show relevant only to old-fart left coast effetes or think that these are the rants of an ungrateful Mormon version of Quiz Kid Donnie Smith with delusions of becoming a Scott Adams for the Flyover Country set, “Ken Jen’s” polemic is a funny read.

Related Reads

• CNN: ‘Jeopardy’ champ Jennings jabs show
• New York Post’s Michael Starr: Gift Horse, Meet Ken Jennings
• Ken Jennings: Sense of Humor, Meet Michael Starr
• Deseret News: ‘Jeopardy’ champ Ken Jennings says comments about game show weren’t ‘bashing’

Click the image above to see the video.

My friend Lisa Goldman, who blogs from Tel Aviv at On The Face, was interviewed on the morning news show Canada AM about blogging with respect to the current situation in Lebanon and Israel [link to site using Windows Media]. In the interview, she talks about how blogging has helped Lebanese and Israeli civilians communicate and recognize each other’s humanity and the strange and surreal situations that arise during war. It’s a short interview, and makes a good introduction to the sort of stuff you’ll find on her blog, which I find to be a much better read than the shouting going on at Little Green Footballs and Daily Kos.

Also Worth Checking Out

Lisa’s a regular poster to Global Voices Online, a project started by my friends Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon. Here’s a link to the last posting she made, which covers what the Israeli blogosphere is saying.

You should aslo check out her post titled Putting Things in Perspective, which debunks some of the propaganda surrounding a photo that’s been inflaming the Arab blogosphere.

On Kottke, there’s an infographic from The Independent which shows quite graphically which countries support an immediate ceasefire and which don’t.

Over at Slate, there’s a Flash-based interactive “Buddy List” which lets you see who in the Middle East is pals with whom, who are mortal enemies and who are in “it’s complicated” relationships.

Strife and Power in the New Middle East. A New York Times infographic that documents the relationships between various groups in the Middle East.

Courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele, here’s George Bush’s European Vacation:

In case you don’t know what this is all about, see here, here and here. And probably tonight’s Daily Show.

The photo above is one of my friend Lisa Goldman, a journalist based in Tel Aviv who blogs at On the Face. Whenever things are going all ballistic in the neighbourhood of Israel, I go check out her blog to see perspectives I might not otherwise catch on the news here — not only hers, but from the blogs to which she links. Her most recent entries cover the current situation — not just from the war-and-politics angle, but also from the point of view of someone going about their daily life amidst it all. Go check out her blog; it’s worthwhile reading.