Asher Kelman said:
A. The adjectives "dubious" and "drunken" do not qualify for principal descriptors of the Gibson’s opprobrium.
Granted, not in general. Again - as hopefully made clear by a later post from me - I do not excuse his overall politics and religion, muddled as they may be. I just pointed out that under the influence we tend to say things we'd never act upon when sober [which is why many "politically" motivated slobs, like our own German Neo-Nazis, tend to drink a lot or use peer pressure to get high before getting real nasty].
As it was originally reported, the MG incident was just another look who's behaving; it was out of context, the guy in question was definitely not on top of his game. It may be, and lots of things point in that direction, that Mr G really behaved like he thinks.
That, is something you might consider retracting Dierk.
No. first, read the sentence again and you will find that the last two items I listed are deliberately chosen for ironic effect. Second, my point was that
anything differentiating us "from others" will be used as an excuse.
The Nazis went to great lengths to show why Jews are so different they cannot be counted as Germans. Most people, even Jews, till today believe there have been Germans and there have been Jews living in Germany before WW2. Most people (educated or not) still differentiate today between Germans and Jews living here; the same, BTW, holds true for all other European countries and for the USA. Did it ever occur to you that 'Jew' and 'German' are not in the same category? The Jews having lived in Germany before ethnic cleansing were - Germans. Many of them were very proud Germans, conservative, some thought Hitler was right apart from the Jew-thing.
The differences shown by the Nazi paper
Stürmer were not gross oversimplifications, they were abysmally bad caricatures of the image some non-Jews had in their mind. No Jew ever looked like the pictures concocted by the
Stürmer. They used exactly the "6-toe"-category to make Jews Untermenschen, sub-humans. Because it is easier to kill a being that is not part of Homo sapiens proper. As a cultural reference: in the 50s B-movies used the same kind of defining what we can kill without regret - 3 fingers and it is evil.
As a last point for that: I talked about arbitrariness, not actual genocide based upon a 6th toe. Thinking about it, the 'Big Nose'-joke from
Monty Python's Life of Brian makes the same point.
The REAL existing xenophobias (which are inculcated into innocent children), result in torture, rape, massacres and destruction of existence of whole cultures.
Did I deny that? I was only trying to convey that the basic notion of "the others" is not a cultural thing, only the specifics of how to define the others. Even "innocent" children aren't free of that, they are not blank slates when they are born. Parents know quite well that it is virtually impossible to teach their children to play with all the other children, not to exclude one. They will still do that. Only Hollywood resolve this within 100 min - parodied more than once by
The Simpsons,
Malcolm in the Middle etc.
1. Treating an educated, trained, competent female police officer as a sexual organ. This is not merely disrespect, nor "sexism". It is downright mean, horrible and depraved reduction of womanhood to triviality.
Whatever you name it, it is the very definition of sexism at its lowest end: Differentiating by sex to negative ends. A classical sexist is a man seeing woman as sex objects (or as washing machines if you are Woody Allen*).
Mel Gibson's hatred is presented in propaganda celebrating his obsession with the crime of killing god by glorifying his own torture and death in "Braveheart".
He even made his terrible death current, yelling "Freedom!", instead of "Forgive them..."!
That dramatized punishment, by tortured death, was a hardly camouflaged mimicry of the Crucifixion.
I think you are a bit over the top here.
Before I start about William Wallace and Mr Gibson's retelling of the story, let me assure you that
a) I don't like
Braveheart
b) I don't like religion at all.
William Wallace's fight was about freedom not forgiveness [in classical historical understanding]; Jesus Christ's pieta was about forgiveness. A work of art is always about the artists and his view of the world; I find it hard to fault Mel Gibson for that. His interpretation of William Wallce's fight or the pieta is as valid as Martin Scorcese's - I may not share it but that does not make it invalid.*
Personally I find Freedom, Liberty and Enlightenment worthwhile - the only worthwhile (apart from self-defense) - causes to fight for. I am glad there have been loads of young man fighting for a free Europe in the 40s. Otherwise I wouldn't have the ability to discuss such matters with you here. The problem is that, given most people find these causes worthwhile, political and religious leaders use the names and tag them onto their own ends. And these are most often the exact opposites of the names put on them.
At least islamic leaders are true enogh to proclaim their fight against Freedom, Liberty and Enlightenment. Would Christians were be as truthful [William Donohue may be [...].
*Apologies to Woody Allen and any of his fans.
**Since there is no actual historical evidence of Jesus Christ ever having lived - just a few meagre hints about great numbers of seers proclaiming themselves prophets or even the Messiah - anybody can do anything with this literary figure.