Mel Gibson is a bug. He needs to be squished.
He is famously handsome, funny, lovable, talented and wealthy.
Which is why he must now be squished.
It’s what we do to our icons, right? We make ’em bigger than life, take away their material needs, and leave them alone to wrestle with their inflated emotional needs.
It’s the deal with the devil, the price of fame and fortune.
And then, when they get as rich and famous as they’re going to get, when we’re about finished with them when they stumble and we can smell the fear, we jump on them like a pack of wild dogs.
“‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!'” *
There is no excusing or justifying Mel’s behavior but there is a reason for it. I don’t know what it is. It suggests a raging psychosis that must be chemically treated and held in check. But, hell. I don’t know. How would I?
How would you?
I don’t care what happens to Mel Gibson. Well, I do care but only in an abstract way. What I care about more is the cheap thrill we get from the pervasive, nonstop media airings of Mel and Oksana’s dirty laundry.
It relieves us to mock and spit on our icons.
Who cares if Mel eats a bullet?
And while we’re at it, send that booze-sucking slut, Lindsay, to jail and throw away the key.
We made them. When we’re finished playing we’ll destroy them.
“The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.” *
Lighten up, it’s all in good fun. These people aren’t real people, we invented them.
It’s not my fault Michael Jackson was weird; I didn’t kill him. He did it to himself. He was weird.
And I was finished with him, anyway.
“We was on the outside. We never done nothing, we never seen nothing.”*
It’s been a week. The story is old. Oksana will thrive. Mel will live or he won’t.
Who’s next?
“after all we aren’t savages really…” *
* William Golding, Lord of the Flies
© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved
Dave,
What you said about Michael Jackson, couldn’t that apply as well to Gibson? He is obviously weird and is doing all this to himself. And isn’t it a good thing that we know about this? I notice in today’s news that a judge has ordered him to turn in all of his guns..prompted by his rant against his girlfriend while waving a gun in her face. In this case, I think the exposure of his raging, racist temperament may well serve to prevent a real tragedy.
D Dubya:
Great stuff.
you should be contributing more of your exceptional writing talent to the KROY web site
You’re articulate, interesting and passionate.
Any more and you’d be Hemingway.
Or, Lord Byron.
Scratch the last two.
best
Bob
I’m glad this behavior has been exposed – however it came to be. It’s frightening. What’s scarier to me than examining the lives of celebrities, is that many fans evidently believe that gaining fame automatically makes the famous impervious to imperfections.
To further flex the Golding metaphor, it’s like life thru Piggy’s broken glasses: The more we pick over frailties, the more skewed our view so we can’t recognize the important stuff to save our lives.