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Monday, October 16, 2006

Tolerance

We do all know already about what a dirty anti-Semite Mel Gibson is. Dirty dirty dirty. Just dirty. Ugh. So very dirty. Of course we knew it already, what with that weird cult he believes in, and then that hateful anti-Semitic Jesus movie that was so hateful and so dirtily anti-Semitic. A hateful creature such as Mel Gibson should be driven from the public square -- or to it, where he’d be burned! We should march on his castle carrying torches and pitchforks. It’s intolerable.

How dare he have, let along express, such an opinion. I mean, this is America!

Is it possible to channel somebody who’s still alive? I just turned into Tim Rutten there for a moment. You know -- Tim Rutten, who wrote an opinion piece in Saturday’s, uh, La Tiempas? Well, LA Times, by any other name.... I’d never paid any mind to Tim, before. Barely heard of him. But after reading his self-righteous and marginally insane hit piece, I formulated a hypothesis about him. This, I deduced, must be a liberal. A very brief search inflated this inkling into a galaxy. Tim Rutten is out there with the Horse's-ass Nebula.

It wasn’t his self-righteousness. I’m self-righteous. It wasn’t the certitude -- only an idiot isn’t certain. Not the glee in selecting, oh, how shall I say, le mot juste. You don’t have to be a faggy pinko jewlover to savour the oral delectitude of diction in all its inflamed and rampant glory. No. It was the fact that Tim Rutten evinces no place in his soul for forgiveness of someone else’s mere opinion.

The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world? Really, Mel -- what on earth where you thinking? Well ... I suppose you were thinking that the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Then again, I think AIDS is spread by anal intercourse. I think GLOBAL WARMING!!! is not anthropogenic. I think abortion kills babies. Go figure. Not everyone is so blessed as to be entirely without proscribed thoughts. And yet, I posit, we are allowed to have wacky, insensitive, and even wrong opinions. This is what I take to be a “Conservative” position.

After quoting Gibson in his Sawyer interview, Rutten rephrases him thus: “the problem with being drunk is that it robs you of the ability to balance your anti-Semitic convictions against the potential effect of their disclosure. It's a novel argument for moderation, but somehow the suggestion that bigotry can be expressed sotto voce leaves one rather cold...” Hear hear, Tim. Really self-righteous. “Whatever else Gibson may have gleaned from the so-called traditional Catholicism he practices, a continued belief in collective guilt, particularly as applied to Jews, seems to be one of his autonomic reflexes.” A good sentence. Nasty, the way I like them. And Mel deserves it, after his “unsavory” “tirade”, and what with his “so-called” religionousicity. Thus, we are instructed by Mr. Rutten, no apology via the Hollywood press corps -- “celebrity-besotted lap dogs” -- will do. But I would appreciate instruction from Mr. Rutten in the difference between "collective" guilt and perpetual guilt.

Again per Mr. Rutten, “What any honest reader will find [in Gibson’s apologies] is a self-pitying series of rationalizations for inexcusable conduct. This time around, we can presume only that they were soberly conveyed. So, at the end of the day, what you've got is a guy whose anti-Semitic attitudes are so deeply ingrained and unexamined that he cannot control them even when his career is on the line.” That’s right. Light up the torches, boys. There is no apology, for such “conduct”. Mel cannot be sincere, there’s no such thing as repentance, and there can be no forgiveness for any of the “phantoms pulled from his rat bag of paranoid bigotries.”

It is my loosely held opinion, given a not-quite-paucity of data, that Mel Gibson has a problem with Jews -- Jews as a historical and political force. Well, it’s not a new idea. My own bias bends in the other direction. I have a problem with Moslems. Not all Moslems, not some random individual Moslem. Moslems as that group that is enamored with murder as a tool of political discourse. I suggest that the evidence regarding who it is who starts wars favors my position over that of Mel’s, but since every opinion is as good as every other opinion, there’s no way of ever knowing who’s right. Except of course for the fact that Tim Rutten and his leftist ilk are the deciders. I know, it’s confusing and inconsistent. What do you want, absolutes? Go thump yer bible, fanatic.

We’re all so biased. Mel’s anti-Semitic, I’m anti-Islamist, Tim’s pro-Arab and pro-Jew and anti-Israel ... um ... somehow. Maybe we’re all right. How Tim can be right and Mel wrong, though, I just don’t get. Indeed, it seems like Mel is a Lefty, except that he is known to utter his conspiratorial Jew-baiting (rather than Israel-baiting) only when under the influence of alcohol. I think anti-Semitism, in the form of anti-Israelism, is a plank of the Dem platform. No? Guess it’s only implied.

These scibblings are not about Mel, though. Rather, about Tim. My point is that people can believe whatever they want. That’s what we call “freedom.” The idea that someone holds an opinion that I find destructive holds no terror for me. Go ahead and be wrong. It makes me all the more, uh, righter. Yeah, you heard me. The wronger you are, the righter I am. To my way of thinking, "conduct" has a meaning somewhat more precise than mere annoying comment. So, for example, sucking out the brain of a human fetus -- that is objectionable "conduct" -- perhaps even "inexcusable". But I suppose I could be wrong ... if there is no God, and if humanity is a phenomenological rather than an ontological state. Does Mr. Rutten suppose he could be wrong?

We all have our limits. Mel is bothered by all the Jew wars. Tim is incensed that Mel seems to be intolerant of the Semite class. I have been moved from my characteristic torpor to respond to Tim’s intolerance. Indeed, while I tolerate his intolerance, I do not tolerate it in silence. What is to be done? Why, we’re doing it. Mel, and Tim, and me -- we express our views. Some of us are reviled for this in the MSM. Some make money writing about our views in our fancy skyrise office suites surrounded by our mini-skirted stenographers and chrome and glass endtables. Some of us sit cross-legged in our underwear chain-smoking and eating pork-n-beans from the can, scratching out my barely legible paragraphs with pencil stubs on Starbucks napkins. Who's to say who's right. What is "right," anyway. And why is life so barren and unpleasant? So empty and devoid of meaning? Damn that Mel Gibson, and Rutten too. It's the Juz faults, and the lefty democrats too! They should all be gassed.


J

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