Scary

[Trigger warning for misogyny and sexual assault.]

Shaker Kelly sent me the word cloud of Mel Gibson's latest rant, and it is a very interesting picture indeed. It's NSFW-ish, so I've stuck it below the fold, along with the rest of the post...


[Click to embiggen.]
Meanwhile, Whoopi Goldberg, who apparently didn't feel like she sufficiently made a jackass of herself defending Polanski's crime as not "rape-rape," has taken up the mantle of defending Gibson, and she's done it in one of the most objectionable ways possible:

Whoopi: I don't like what he did here, but I know Mel and I know he's not a racist... He may be a bonehead... I have had a long friendship with Mel... You can say he's being a bonehead but I can't sit and say that he's a racist having spent time with him in my house with my kids. I can't say it and so I really just need to say that. I don't like what he's done. Make no mistake...

Joy: Do you think he's anti-Semitic?

Whoopi: I think he's an a**hole (covers mouth, audio is silent)

Joy: Somebody says to a police officer, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." That's not anti-Semitic?

Whoopi: Drunks say stupid stuff to people all the time because they're drunk. They're out of control. They are not thinking they are idiotic. That's why I don't like alcohol. I can't say anything about that because I know what people are like when they're drunk. This rant, I don't think he's drunk on this rant...

Joy: A lot of people drink and don't say those things.

Too right. And note the difference between Goldberg saying Gibson isn't "a racist" and Behar noting his words/actions were anti-Semitic. If the word anti-Semitism is to have any meaning at all, of course Gibson's words were anti-Semitic. And if the word racism is to have any meaning at all, of course Gibson's use of anti-Semitic tropes and racial slurs is racist.

But Goldberg is treating racist as something a person either is, or isn't. Instead of acknowledging that the question is not whether we've all got internalized racism, but whether we individually choose to leave it unexamined, she deflects all criticism of Gibson's objectively racist rantings to defend what is an improbable lack of racism even among people who don't go around shouting racist shit, booze or no.

It's a reflexive defensiveness of her friend almost certainly rooted in the emergent narrative that accusations of bias are an equivalent offense to expressions of bias; that is, we are now meant to regard being accused of racism as just as horrible an experience as being targeted by racism. Ultimately, Goldberg is really just trying to argue that Gibson isn't a thoroughly and irredeemably contemptible person.

Which, frankly, seems at best a silly thing to do on behalf of a man who knocked out his former partner's teeth and threatened to kill her.

I used to like Whoopi Goldberg before I knew of her habit of using her platform to defend privileged men who like to hurt women.

[Related Reading: Such a Good Kid. TW for violent homophobia. Actual Headline: "'Racist' claims defuse once powerful word." TW for racism.]