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# Gibson’s PR blunder exposes the nasty truth
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/gibsons-pr-blunder-exposes-the-nasty-truth/
- Published: 2006-08-31T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:49:43.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Malibu, #archive-import

*By BLAST BY SETH BARNES*

The road outside my rural New England home was pretty quiet while I was growing up. On Halloween a couple of aimless teenagers might smash a beer can or ring some trees with toilet paper. If they were really feisty, you might find a demolished pumpkin the next day.

Fast forward 15 years and the road outside my home is the Pacific Coast Highway. Here, some of the world’s most recognizable celebrities spend their time careening about in luxury automobiles. On any given night, one of these pumpkin heads might turn it up a notch, smash down a few beers — or a liter of tequila — and spout off some potty language that can’t be cleaned up with all the triple-ply toilet paper in Malibu.

It can be a mess out there. Ask Mel Gibson. While his onerous, bigoted statements can’t be overlooked or pushed aside as the crux of this story, I think Mr. Gibson perpetrated another royal screw-up that night that has been ignored. He should have admitted that he in fact held some beliefs that were ethnically insensitive or even bigoted. He should have owned up to his own words. From a public relations perspective, it was the only way to hope for forgiveness in the public eye. Now it’s too late.

Imagine the reaction if Gibson had said, “I have held some views that, given the backlash to this incident, I now realize are ethnically biased. I admit that I have been intolerant toward people of Jewish faith. Now, I genuinely want to change. I promise to dedicate my mind and spirit to overcoming these unacceptable, discriminatory biases, and I will not rest until I have done so.”

Instead Gibson blamed his tirade on incoherent drunkenness while insisting he isn’t a bigot. Nobody believes him. Yes, he asked the Jewish community and Jewish leaders for help in “healing” but imagine how much more powerful his request would have been if he’d said “I’m an anti-Semite, and I want to change. Please help me. My only wish is that one day I can transform myself and serve as a valuable example to others.”

Sure, he reached out to the Jewish community for a helping hand, but he also insisted that he isn’t a bigot and that “hatred of any kind goes against my faith.” So, Mel, you’re basically denying that you have a problem, but asking for help from the very group you offended as a ploy of contrition. Just like an alcoholic denying a drinking problem but asking a counselor for “help” to slip one by his probation officer, right? How disingenuous can you get? And do you really think people are so stupid that they haven’t picked up on this dramatic contradiction?

This is the problem with Hollywood: Stars forget that people know they’re actors and actresses who are usually “on.” In the real world this is doublespeak for “faking.” Normal folks can smell the smallest drop of insincerity. So when celebrities stump for social causes and the like it reeks of B.S., nothing other than playacting by the privileged to feel a little less guilty about their own lavish, vapid lifestyles.

While all this proves that most celebrities are a bunch of hacks with nothing but high school diplomas and airbrushed smiles, I’d like to save the heavy artillery for the monstrous idiots who act as publicists for Hollywood’s elite. They’re truly the ones in these situations who lead the parade away from honesty toward maximum obfuscation. It never works. People can tolerate and even accept a flawed person who’s a straight-shooter. Sometimes they elect them president.

Some of you might say that an avowed bigot would never be accepted. Probably true. But if Gibson really dedicated himself to rehabbing his attitude instead of his image, he might have retained a few people who really believed in him. As of now, nobody does.

Can bigots be rehabilitated? I think people want to believe that they can. When people own up to their shortcomings and work hard to right their wrongs, almost anything can happen.

Think about this: Gibson’s obituary could have read that he changed stream after a mid-life crisis and devoted the rest of his life to tolerance and respect toward those different from himself. As things currently stand with this incident, is there any chance of that happening?

A final point is that average Americans may not know much about owning a home in Malibu — or even “owning Malibu” — or driving a Lexus, but many of them have been rip-roaring drunk before. And I think we all know that alcohol — even for alcoholics — doesn’t usually lead to illogical garble and ranting. Usually it causes us to spew forth with the oh-so-true. Sometimes, painfully so.

And that’s the message from me, the self-appointed Crisis Manager To The Stars: Mel could have been a real Braveheart by being honest. But he dropped the ball, which isn’t surprising.

Because celebrities are responsible for all the insincerity in the world. (Seth Barnes)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 31, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/083106.pdf?ref=smdp.com)