But he did not say those things while sober. If he did, then I’d be very, very, very offended and wouldn’t consider myself a fan anymore.–Mermade

Ok, here you go, some really hateful remarks that Gibson made while (presumably) sober:
From a usa today article:

In 2004, after The New York Times’ Frank Rich wrote a column saying The Passion of the Christ could fuel anti-Semitism abroad, Gibson told The New Yorker: “I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.

In a 1995 Playboy interview, he said of a British author of an unauthorized Gibson biography: “I don’t think God will put him in my path. He deserves death.”

In the same interview, when asked about GLAAD’s protest over his statements about homosexuality: “I’ll apologize when hell freezes over. They can f- —— off.”

From an about.com article on atheism and agnosticism:
On not disagreeing with his father about the reality of the Jewish Holocaust:
“I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. 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. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.”

The trick here, as the author points out is that:

“Holocaust deniers, at least the sophisticated ones, don’t deny that Jews were sent to concentration camps, and don’t deny that Jews suffered during the war, and perhaps suffered a bit disproportionately because they were Jews. What they do deny was that the Germans singled out the Jews for genocide, that millions of Jews were murdered, and that Jews were sent to death camps, not simply to labor or concentration camps.”

But he did not say those things while sober. If he did, then I’d be very, very, very offended and wouldn’t consider myself a fan anymore.–Mermade

Ok, here you go, some really hateful remarks that Gibson made while (presumably) sober:
From a usa today article:

In 2004, after The New York Times’ Frank Rich wrote a column saying The Passion of the Christ could fuel anti-Semitism abroad, Gibson told The New Yorker: “I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.

In a 1995 Playboy interview, he said of a British author of an unauthorized Gibson biography: “I don’t think God will put him in my path. He deserves death.”

In the same interview, when asked about GLAAD’s protest over his statements about homosexuality: “I’ll apologize when hell freezes over. They can f- —— off.”

From an about.com article on atheist and agnosticism:
On not disagreeing with his father about the reality of the Jewish Holocaust:
“I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. 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. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.”

The trick here, as the author points out is that:

“Holocaust deniers, at least the sophisticated ones, don’t deny that Jews were sent to concentration camps, and don’t deny that Jews suffered during the war, and perhaps suffered a bit disproportionately because they were Jews. What they do deny was that the Germans singled out the Jews for genocide, that millions of Jews were murdered, and that Jews were sent to death camps, not simply to labor or concentration camps.”

Interesting to hear you loved Gibson’s Hamlet - when we studied it during my senior year, my English teacher gave us a lecture on why he hated it and refused to show it to our class. I still need to watch it and form my own conclusions. Teachers and their movie opinions… :-)

And yes, Edward II was gay. But not effeminate — Gibson makes the classic anachronistic mistake of confusing the two. Edward II was famed for his bravery (to the point of foolhardiness) and for his physical prowess as an athlete. An eye-liner wearing aesthete he wasn’t, and it was a very homophobic and inaccurate betrayal.

Isabella of France was born in 1292; Wallace executed in 1305. She was barely 13 when he died, and they certainly never met. Her son with Edward II, the great Edward III, wasn’t born until 1312. The speculation that Wallace was the father — the film makes it obvious in Edward I’s deathbed scene - is ludicruous.

These are the sorts of things that go beyond historical license to absurd invention.

Here’s the question I’ve always had for Mel: given his faith, and his love for the character of William Wallace, what does he mean by Wallace’s obsession with “Freedom”? What kind of freedom was he referring to? Its certainly not the freedoms we think of today, and given that Scotland and England shared a common faith, it can’t have been religious freedom? Some inarticulate belief in self-determination? Ethnic nationalism? It never gets explained.

So yeah, I hated the movie. But I liked Gibson’s “Hamlet”, and I loved “Gallipoli”…

Gibson is a human being. A devout Christian, yes, but also a human being who has profound struggles like the rest of us. Alcohol is not “truth tonic.” I know from personal experience that any mood-altering substance, be it alcohol or Vicodin, lies and hurts and cheats and disrespects. Gibson f***ed up, yes. But he did not say those things while sober. If he did, then I’d be very, very, very offended and wouldn’t consider myself a fan anymore.

I find inspiration to forgive him - and everyone else who sins - through the message of his movie The Passion of the Christ. I think Gibson’s good outweighs his bad, especially given that he’s come far recovering from the alcoholism that overpowered his younger years.

Hugo, thanks so much for saying this, and for the whole paragraph this statement is from.

It’s been a week and enough time has passed that much of the media frenzy has now died down. Much has already been written about Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Jewish* comments, much of it in the nature of outright condemnation. As

But you found it relevant enough to misquote, by leaving out the point of the sentence.

Here, I’ll try it now:
“I hold…consenting to have sex…beyond…relevant.”–The Gonzman

I didn’t quote the whole thing because I didn’t find everything in between those words relevant.