The sight of a famous person crumbling is irresistible. People love to see the mighty fallen, to gloat over leaked video of people falling over drunk, or falling over sober, for that matter.
We enjoyed watching time-lapse video of Lindsay Lohan degenerating, we sucked up the pictures of Michael Jackson’s face falling apart. Botched plastic surgeries, beauties without makeup, celebrities getting fat.
But there is a point at which you’ve gotta tuck your schadenfreude back in your shorts and that’s when mental illness seems to be the problem. Then it’s just pathetic, in the true sense of the word.
Mel Gibson’s unravelling has hit that point.
Over the past few years we’ve witnessed his downfall, his racism, his repulsive comments. Just last week it was revealed he called Jews ‘oven dodgers’, and indulged in a bit of Holocaust denial. He has form on the anti-Semitic front.
Gibson’s screenwriter Joe Eszterhas spilled the beans to the media on his latest rant – Gibson called Eszterhas a liar, and in retaliation Eszterhas has again gone to the media, this time with audio of a rampant rant which is mostly inchoate and incoherent, and just a little bit sweary. You can hear it here.
According to Eszterhas, Gibson said a bunch of other stuff to guests in his home, such as this after looking at a photo of himself with his daughter:
I look so fucking old! I look horrible! That fucking whore is destroying me! She’s taking my looks! I hate her! She’s destroying my life!
This latest outburst goes a long way to showing that he’s not just a potty-mouth racist anti-Semitic man with a bitter ball of bile in his guts, he’s got even deeper issues.
It’s not a pretty side of humanity but we (and by we, I’m obviously including we in the media) do love the tale of the fallen star. There’s an element of gloating, and maybe it comes from cherishing the idea that these glittering people are… just people.
But you have to draw a line and with Mel Gibson, the line is here. The guy needs help.
Now, back to those pictures of Lohan…
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