Robert Downy, Jr, says we need to forgive Mel Gibson

I didn't like Mel Gibson in the first place and I haven't kept up with the latest stuff. What did he do? Leave unkind messages on his common-law wife's answering machine? Did he punch her or something? I don't know, so I probably shouldn't be speculating. I saw that idiot Ben Stiller do that on TV. He said something about a former child star who was arrested after some minor incident. It was nothing serious--not a case of a child star gone renegade. But Stiller sat there on national TV thinking out loud, "I'm not sure if he served any time for that, or if he was convicted." (The charges were dropped.)

The anti-Semitism accusation was crap. He made The Passion of the Christ which the ultra-right-wing head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center claimed was anti-Semitic because it didn't re-write the New Testament to make the Pharisees look good. And Gibson got drunk, asked the Jewish cop if he was Jewish and made a hyperbolic remark about the number of wars the Jews have started. (The war the Israelis launched against Lebanon had just ended, but Lebanese children were still losing their hands, arms and legs to the millions of cluster bombs the Zionists dropped on Southern Lebanon.)

Like I say, I haven't kept up with any of the other stuff. I generally don't like him, so I generally went along with the attacks on The Passion of the Christ, but we should probably look at this stuff again and be very specific about what terrible sins he's supposed to have committed and then stack it up against other celebrities.

A few examples:

John Lennon made cruel comments about the circumstances of Julien Lennon's conception.

Phil Silvers liked hanging around with Jewish gangsters because he liked "tough Jews".

Am I the only one who remembers seeing Buddy Hackett on the The Tonight Show talking in his adorable, childlike manner about how the Mafia murdered some men who burglarized his house? I was a kid when I saw it and I might have misread it, but he indicated that, as professional criminals, they should have known not to rob someone who worked in a mob-owned casino.

Robert Mitchum attacked a woman reporter.

There was that whole palimony thing with Lee Marvin.

Ted Danson and that stupid blackface incident.

That time Marlon Brando kissed Larry King and he was a lousy father.

All the Mafia stuff with Frank Sinatra.

Racist jokes in Marx Brothers movies. Groucho referring to African-Americans as "darkies".

Name a Hollywood star who hasn't been in a racist movie. Well. I don't know. I'm sure there are some.

That French guy in Pepe Le Moko who became a Nazi collaborator.

Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden's disgusting trip to Israel to show their support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon around the time of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

John Wayne described himself as a white supremacist (did he know what he was saying?)