Having (barely) survived the first round of the terrifying global warming reality show previewed nationwide over the past two weeks, we can all now sit back, relax and enjoy the other meltdowns as we wait for what Rev. Pat Robertson and other evangelicals are saying is imminent: The End Times.
What over-the-top TV event to start with, the heat wave of 2006 (and since November is just around the political corner, keep the following news quote in mind: House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said he would oppose global warming mandates if Republicans control the 110th Congress: "I think the information is not adequate yet for us to do anything meaningful,") the imminence of WWIII, or Mel Gibson?
This being summer, we have two entertainment choices, scary or fun. Let's do fun, because the end of the world as we know it isn't as catchy as the tune, and Gibson's tale is perfectly scripted for the tube.
First, a disclaimer: Schadenfreude is a dangerous practice to engage in, because you never know when it will suddenly turn into karma. (And it's never wise to trust something invented by the Germans anyway, especially if Nietzsche had a hand in it.) That said, we have to say how very much we have enjoyed the Mel Gibson debacle from just that vantage point. We've been positively giddy. As Craig Ferguson exclaimed on the first night of the Gibson takedown, "I haven't had this much fun since Dick Cheney shot the lawyer."
On Ferguson's August 4 show, he commented on the legs the Gibson scandal had. "This story has run for a full eight days without giving out. Kind of like Hanukkah." On that same show, comedian Carlos Mencia explained Gibson's meltdown this way: "They said it was tequila, but I think he was drinking German beer."
Melwatch lifted up an otherwise sluggish summer of comedy on late-night. The prize goes to the Jimmy Kimmel show, for the Photoshop extravaganzas that included a Gibson bar mitzvah among other hilarities.
Allow us the Schadenfreude: We told you so. Back when Mel's Passion of the Christ was causing controversy, we wrote about the interview Diane Sawyer did with Gibson for ABC and noted that he seemed, well, totally nuts. Wide-eyed certifiable. Sawyer asked him several times if he was anti-Semitic. No, no, a thousand times no! Gibson told her. Yet when asked, he refused comment on the fact that his father is a Holocaust denier and writes Holocaust denial literature. As we noted back then, if it looks like a pogrom and smells like a pogrom... Kimmel showed a clip from that interview, only in his version, Gibson's nose grew each time he denied that he was anti-Semitic.
So Mel was out drinking with a lot of women not his wife (standard behavior for right-wing ideologues who tout family values, have seven kids and their own churches). Then he goes driving down PCH (fortunately not in the really narrow part with the 300 ft. drop) at 40 miles over the speed limit. Can you spell DUI?
Now, why do we think that if we had been pulled over, then called the cops "f***ing Jews" and sexually harassed a female cop by calling her "sugar tits," no one would have given us a cup of coffee and a ride home? But then, we don't "own Malibu." (Wait — we're confused! Don't "the Jews" own everything?)
The most disturbing aspect of the Gibson debacle isn't that what he said was despicable (although we love seeing him hoisted on his own foul petard). He always was despicable. (Don't forget, he hates queers, too, and didn't have the excuse of being drunk to cover his anti-gay statements.) But having watched as much coverage in the past week of Melwatch as of the wars in the Middle East (which, according to Mel, are all caused by the Jews), having seen myriad tabloid TV and serious news shows hand-wringing about what will become of Mel's career, and having heard (and howled at) all the late night jokes, in the end it's just another Michael Jackson/OJ Simpson/Robert Blake spin: celebs really can get away with anything if they have the money, the power and the fan base. (Unless you're Britney Spears and don't have a car seat.)
Which brings up the Kantian question: If TMZ.com hadn't broken the story and fed it to the networks, would it have even been a story?
Which begs another question: Why is Gibson's meltdown a story? Why has there been as much videotape of Mel as there has been of the wars in the Middle East? Is it because Harvey Levin, who runs TMZ, is Jewish? Levin told Nightline he thought long and hard before he ran the story because of the damage it might do to Gibson's career. Is it because the major power-brokers in Hollywood are Jewish? Is it a cabalistic conspiracy?
None of the above. Rather, it's that in 2006, outright, in-your-face, public bigotry is just incredibly vulgar. It isn't that people have stopped being bigots. Far from it. It's that the out-loud kind replete with expletives reeks of ickiness and inbred ignorance. Kind of like Mel's mug shot looked.
Sadly, we know Teflon when we see it. Right-wingers never seem to take the heat left-wingers do for the same crimes (remember when Martin Sheen called the cops on son Charlie to blast him into rehab? Or when Robert Downey Jr. went to prison?). So expect the Mel story to take some sappy, weasely turn in which all is forgiven, the real culprit turns out to be addiction, and Mel is shot wearing a tallis and yarmulke in something other than a photo-shopped Kimmel sketch.
The ever-pithy Ferguson (a self-confessed recovering alcoholic and former blackout drunk who has been sober for 14 years) explained rather succinctly one night last week that for an alcoholic, a .12 alcohol level is nothing and doesn't "cover" the sort of comments Gibson made. Just like it didn't cover his anti-gay diatribes.
In vino veritas? Or just a Homer Simpson moment: "Did I say that out loud? " The shock isn't in what Gibson said, which we all knew he was thinking, but that he said it. Icky, icky, icky.
Evangelical heart
Speaking of bigotry, we grew up in the days when hating Jews was the norm in this country. Not so long ago. But from what we have seen in recent days on the news, evangelical Christians (one in four Americans, according to ABC's Nightline) have jumped on the support-Israel bandwagon with a vengeance of Biblical proportions. Suddenly, the Jews are a Christian's best friend (well, except Gibson).
Evangelicals are touting the end of the world and pointing to the wars in the Middle East as their template ("there will be wars and rumors of wars" pretty much covers the Bush and Olmert Administrations, doesn't it?). Evangelicals, according to a big piece on Nightline August 3, are eagerly awaiting the Rapture, when the Messiah returns to Israel and the faithful (evangelical Christians) are raised up to heaven. The rest don't fare so well. Particularly the Jews, who, after care-taking Israel for the evangelicals, perish.
It's alarming stuff. Especially since it appears to be driving American foreign policy. The President is himself an evangelical, as is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Why else would any sane world leader stand by and watch the carnage in Lebanon, making no move to end it? Is it just that Bush doesn't watch the news? Is he unaware that Lebanon is being decimated, more than a million Lebanese have been displaced, and hundreds have been killed, a third of them children?
Seeing former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu popping up on the tube every other hour as he tours Europe and the US stumping for the war can only mean terrible things for Israel and Lebanon. Netanyahu is Israel's Dick Cheney, Machiavellian and Fascistic. If Netanyahu is Olmert's pilot fish, the evangelicals could be right: WWIII may indeed be around the corner.
Playing up the WWIII angle is big on TBN (Trinity Broadcast Network), the evangelical network. Robertson is clear: Armageddon is coming soon. But in the meantime, it's important to get as much theocracy into government as possible, and who better than celebrities for Jesus to help in that fight?
Remember Jennifer O'Neill? Cover Girl model for 30 years, Oscar-nominated star of Summer of 42, huge TV movie-of-the-week heroine and guest star on numerous TV series — at 58, O'Neill, still beautiful, has returned to the tube with a vengeance — Biblical vengeance.
We caught her on TBN on August 3 touting her ministries (yes, she has her own ministries: www.jenniferoneill.com) and her latest book, which she described as Desperate Housewives for the saved.
O'Neill has testified before the Senate about abortion and refers to herself as "an abortion survivor." She said on TBN that there is life after abortion, but it is fraught with disease (she cites the erroneous data that abortion contributes to breast cancer), addiction, miscarriage.
In case anyone is thinking that Islamists have cornered the market on propagandizing, check out TBN, the world's largest Christian broadcasting network, reaching umpteen countries. They're not too fond of queers, either.
As Howard Stern noted in an interview with Martin Bashir on Nightline August 4 (check out the whole interview at ABCnews.com; it's terrific), the religious right is America's Taliban.
Better late than never
Speaking of ideologues, if there were any doubt that Sen. Hillary Clinton is running for President, that was put to rest when she skewered Donald Rumsfeld on the floor of the Senate on August 3. In what was one of the best moments of her senatorial career, and only three years late in coming, Sen. Clinton told Rumsfeld he should tender his resignation for having utterly bungled the Iraq war.
Tish tosh, replied Rumsfeld, and went off to ignore more casualty reports, ours and theirs, in earnest. After all, when 3,000 Iraqis have been killed in six weeks' time, who's to say it's a civil war?
We're getting afraid to turn on the tube, the horrors are so ineffable and unending: Carnage everywhere, and no leadership in sight. As Jimmy Kimmel noted after Bush's annual physical, "He's the only President who actually looks better since he took office. Like he doesn't have a care in the world."
Finally, if the planet is still here in a month, which between global warming, Iraq and Lebanon, looks increasingly doubtful, the new fall lineup is looking absolutely, fabulously escapist: NBC actually has some good series once again (really good; you are going to love Studio 60 ), CBS is not your grandmother's network anymore (you are going to love Smith and Jericho ) and ABC is holding steady with solid old (Lost ) and new (The Nine ) fare. But that's for another column, so stay tuned.