Mad Mel

Mel Gibson was arrested for DUI, according to CNN.

But this celebrity-gossip site, which, as I understand it, stalks celebrities wherever they go (figuring that if they’re out in public, they’re fair game [a big blech to that]), has much more inflammatory things to say. [Note: this is gossip.
But I'm passing it on anyway.]

TMZ has learned that Mel Gibson went on a rampage when he was arrested Friday on suspicion of drunk driving, hurling religious epithets. TMZ has also learned that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department had the initial report doctored to keep the real story under wraps. …

Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, “You mother f****r. I’m going to f*** you.” The report also says “Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he ‘owns Malibu’ and will spend all of his money to ‘get even’ with me.”

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: “F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Gibson then asked the deputy, “Are you a Jew?” [emphasis added]

(hat tip: Andrew Sullivan, who seems to have a hate on for the same celebrities as me.)

The juiciest gossip, of course, is the kind you believe…because it so obviously could be true. Like TMZ’s claim that Gibson is a raving anti-Semite. Frank Rich had a lot to say about that in 2004:

In an interview in the current Reader’s Digest, Ms. Noonan asks Mr. Gibson: “The Holocaust happened, right?” After saying that some of his best friends “have numbers on their arms,” he responds: “Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps.” Yes, mistakes happened, atrocities happened, war happened, some of the victims were Jews. This is the classic language of contemporary Holocaust deniers, from David Irving to Mr. Gibson’s own father, Hutton Gibson, a prominent anti-Semitic author and activist. Their rhetorical strategy is to diminish Hitler’s extermination of Jews by folding those deaths into the war’s overall casualty figures, as if the Holocaust were an idle byproduct of battle instead of a Third Reich master plan for genocide.