Monday, July 31, 2006
In Vino Veritas
Speaking of anti-semites, Mel Gibson has shown that the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree. Like his father, he will now be remembered for saying crazy things about the Jews. When The Passion of the Christ was in release he was careful to deny charges of anti-semitism, but it's strange how truthful we become when we're blasted, downright Kantian, sometimes, in the refusal to say anything other than what we really believe to be the case. Better to know this about him than not, I suppose. Those who heard his apology say that it was half-hearted and insincere; I can't comment on any of that, since I didn't hear it, but one can imagine how good an indicator it is of his innermost feelings.
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I guess you and Mike Liccione are strange bedfellows on this one, Paul (see his post here).
I'm sure that Mel Gibson does not "aspire" to be an anti-Semite, or even a homophobe. What he aspires to be, I suppose, would be the labels that he would give to his own attitudes. So, instead of "anti-Semite" he would describe himself as "fervent Catholic", and instead of "homophobe" he would describe himself as "loyal to the Magisterium". And sure enough, those are the sorts of descriptions people give when they're sober and their alleged superegos can keep a watchful eye on what their alleged ids are running around doing in the basement.
This is not to deny that people do and say things, when drunk, that they later regret, and it does, of course, raise the question of what their real feelings are. Mike makes a rather curious argument, in his post, to the effect that we would never allow the police to get their suspects drunk before questioning, but that, of course, is a civil liberties issue, not a sound argument against the view that people are more more likely to say what they really think when they are drunk. I'm not sure that there is such an argument.
I'm happy to concede that we may not know the "real" Mel Gibson, even though I think I subscribe to a more unified view of the self than you seem to. I think that his drunken outburst--along with his apology--have to be taken in the larger context of all of the other things he has said and done, and it seems to me that there's enough there to make a case that he might be a little more honest when he's drunk than when he's sober. But in the realm of human psychology there is very little, I think, that can be known with any certainty.
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