Last night, KTLA’s anchorman Hal Fishman delivered a commentary that basically said “Enough with the Mel Gibson stuff already.”
It would have had somewhat greater impact, I think, had it not come immediately after Hal wrapped up a serious discussion with the Israeli consul general about the situation in the middle east by asking the consul general what he thought of the whole Mel Gibson situation. (The consul general said, among other things, “When wine goes in, secrets come out.”)
And, of course, KTLA had started off the newscast by running the requisite photos of Mel with his arms around women in the bar before he left to get arrested (“posing for photos” is the euphemism du jour) and even a hopelessly pixelated cell-phone video purporting to show Mel dancing around with what looks like a beer bottle in his hand, in the same bar, on the same night.
And it’s a safe bet that if there are further developments, KTLA will be right there. They even sent a reporter out to pose in front of the bar Mel got drunk in, to deliver the news about what Mel had been charged with. Not the sheriff’s office where the charges were filed–the parking lot of the bar where the whole thing started. That says a lot about the nature of the news.
It’s human nature to take a certain amount of gleeful interest when a sanctimonious celebrity gets caught with his pants down. What I find even more interesting is the questions that are not being asked. What was an ostentatiously Catholic guy like Mel Gibson doing whooping it up in a bar by himself at that hour of the morning? Shouldn’t he have been home with his wife and seven children? What does Mrs. Gibson think about all this? Or was she just expected to let boys be boys and not concern herself too much about what her husband was doing out there with other women in the dark? If Mel got belligerent with the officer who arrested him, would he have been worse to his wife when he got home?
The Israeli consul general quoted a very ancient saying: In vino veritas. As the adult child of an alcoholic and as someone who grew up watching my parents’ alcoholic friends make asses of themselves at every available opportunity, I know only too well that people do and say things when intoxicated that they wouldn’t when they were sober. I don’t, however, accept the excuse that it was “just the booze talking.” When the conscious mind’s control is gone, the truth comes out.
No, Hal, I don’t think we’ve quite heard enough yet, and I’m sure KTLA will continue to Mel-ify us for a long time to come.
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