Go to Hell, Mel

You've surely heard by now that Mel Gibson, who recently produced an entire movie seemingly devoted to perpetuating the misconception that the Jews killed Jesus, was recently arrested on suspicions of drunk driving. He then let loose a series of profanities and anti-Semitic slurs.

Normally I wouldn't bother posting on something like this, which is common knowledge by this point. But on the radio this morning, I heard an interview with someone involved in the case (I missed the beginning, so can't say who it is), and this person is claiming that it gets worse. A lot worse. But apparently the evidence of this is being covered up. Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, but with Mel, I'll give the conspiracy theory the benefit of the doubt. We'll apparently be "shocked" when the tape is released.

This person seemed to have some affiliation with TMZ.com, which looks like a tabloid site but is backed by AOL/Time Warner. These were also the people who broke the original transcripts of Mel's remarks, so they might be trustworthy here. Either way, take this new development with a grain of salt.

So why do I care about this at all? Well, I've had it in for Mel since The Passion, which as I mentioned seemed to promote the misconception that the Jews killed Jesus. This misconception is particularly notable as it's been the excuse for countless acts of anti-Semitism throughout history, including the Holocaust itself (Granted, Hitler's motives may have been more political, but he played off the latent anti-Semitism). That belief is now widely disregarded by scholars, as a Roman governor such as Pontius Pilate was unlikely to hesitate to execute anyone who presented potential threat to Roman rule, as Jesus did.

Also, a clerical note: I've been having some problems with comment spam recently, so I've turned on Word Verification for commenting to temporarily block it out. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I'll try turning it off in a bit to see if the spammer has cut off. Also, it seems that Blogger for some reason doesn't tell you which post a comment is posted on when it's e-mailed to you, which makes it all the harder to find and delete it. If anyone knows a better way to handle this, please let me know.