Sympathy for Mel Gibson

It's easy to dismiss Mel Gibson as a hypocrite, but I've walked in shoes his. So, I'd like to pause a minute to learn what I can from his situation.

Mel Gibson's father is a raving, anti-semitic holocaust denier. Mel has spent a fair part of his American life twisting and turning around the issue of anti-semitism while working in Hollywood. Until Mel started screaming Jew-hating profanities at the LA police, he had killed several trees telling interviewers that he was not anti-semitic without denying his father's bigotry or acknowledging the horrible truth about the Holocaust.

My father has been an aggressive racist and woman hater all his adult life. Unlike Mel, I haven't twisted around and dodged the issues. My father is a bigoted and destructive man and I haven't had any trouble acknowledging it since my early twenties. His bigotry is part of his pattern of violence that poisoned every aspect of family life for all eight of his children and I started turning away from the bigotry and violence at an early age.

And I've kept turning away throughout my adult life.

Nevertheless, rejecting the core beliefs of a powerful parent is not an easy thing. I know I haven't completely done so. Even though I've gradually begun to live a multi-racial life, I still hear the voice of racism inside me and know that the revolting voice of racism comes from the part of me that still loves my father.

Rejecting a demanding, aggressive, father or mother can be just as consuming and traumatic as meeting their insane demands. In my case, rejecting my father led to all kinds of physical symptoms, panic attacks, allergies, many delays in completing my graduate training, and continued traumas over writing. It's all been worth it and I wouldn't change a whole lot in my current life, but I paid a huge price for my moral independence.

Knowing exactly what that price is in my case makes me very cautious in feeling morally superior to those who weren't willing to pay.

For me, this is the situation that Mel Gibson was in. He could either follow the anti-semitic, woman-hating road laid out by his demanding father or he could reject his father and deal with the consequences. Or he could have taken the path of moral autonomy and paid whatever price he had to pay for that moral autonomy.

It's obvious now that Gibson has taken the wrong path in a life that has been very successful in some ways. Like his father and my father, Gibson deserves all the criticism that he's going to get even if he doesn't deserve the cruelty that's going to come with it. However, our humanity as critics demands that we understand that the right path might have been a very difficult one.