It took five weeks. Finally, someone emailed me about my column. All I had to do was throw in some Mel Gibson.
Last Thursday, I was doing my morning email check when I found a reader response to last week's column uncomfortably sitting in my inbox. It was from a non-Tufts student; we will call him John Doe for the sake of anonymity. In his emails, John Doe argued that Gibson had suffered enough public humiliation and backlash for his previous mistakes. There were some weak arguments about how Gibson's celebrity friends — some of them Jewish, some of them black and some of them gay — publicly supported their troubled friend, signifying that he is not an anti-Semite, racist or homophobe. And, to John Doe, it was time for Gibson to begin acting and directing again, and it was also time for the moviegoers in this country to support his films.
John Doe and I respectfully went back and forth. He certainly had some film knowledge, but for the most part, he was grasping at straws. For example, he tried to insist there was a double standard for the way Gibson was vilified for the various things he said, while Susan Sarandon did not receive the same treatment for calling the Pope a Nazi — Pope Benedict XVI was in the Hitler Youth for a brief period before choosing to leave. It does not take Clarence Darrow to show how verbally abusing entire groups of people differs from an ignorant remark about one man. Nonetheless, John Doe and I did not take any personal cheap shots while discussing Gibson. There was no cyber name calling — and I appreciated his passion for the topic, as well as his willingness to email me for further discussion.
Then there is "james." And let it be known, I did not capitalize the first letter of a proper noun for a reason. On the morning of Oct. 18, james left a comment about my article on The Tufts Daily website. I encourage you to go read it. In short, james had a similar stance on the Mel Gibson issue to John Doe, except james supported his claims with very reductive reasoning. He glossed over the many sins of Mel Gibson, using alcoholism as an excuse, and then providing the reader — me — with a terrible analogy about terrorists and Shirley Temples. He finished with the gem: "See college frat parties."
In both comments, there was this tone of "let's agree to disagree." However, John Doe and james are both wrong. A good chunk of the American public does not want to support a Mel Gibson film; I have statistics to back it up. A survey conducted in August 2011 by Ipsos Public Affairs found that 33 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Mel Gibson, making him the eighth most unpopular personality in the country. Thirty-one percent of respondents also said they would do less business with a company if it were endorsed by Gibson, which was the seventh highest total for any celebrity in America. Clearly, he has made quite an impression.
So, to james, no, I will not "See college frat parties." There is a humongous difference between some drunken kid being stupid and a well-known actor verbally abusing people and then beating the mother of his child. I can't even type up all of the bigoted things Gibson has said over the years, because if I tried, the whole article would be a bunch of dashes. S---! W---! M---?
Oh, and I did some investigative research. I streamed "The Beaver" online for free. It was an average film built on the stupid gimmick of a man with a talking beaver puppet. A very forgettable film, almost the antithesis of Gibson's hateful actions.
--
Jordan Teicher is a senior majoring in English. He can be reached at Jordan.Teicher@tufts.edu.
