High profile film stars' racial rants show unresolved racial issues

 

[caption id="attachment_10795" align="alignleft" width="241" caption="Mel Gibson - wikimedia commons"][/caption]

Carol Forsloff - In 2009 Courtney Love was quoted using anti-semitic epithets while Mel Gibson used similar ones in 2006 after an arrest.  Gibson is heard on tape using racial epithets recently, but are these rare events or reflections of unresolved issues.

Just below the surface, educators on tolerance say,  at times of spontaneity, during periods of anger, thrill-seeking or fame-seeking behavior, people will reveal some of their unconscious material.  This type of rant isn't an isolated behavior but one that arises when an individual's security is threatened, experts say.  And many of our social institutions reflect our stereotypes and add to these social problems.

While being interviewed by a magazine called Heeb,  Love made inflammatory remarks and used epithets to talk about Paula Fox, a recognized Jewish novelist, who is technically her grandmother. Love went on to say that she only had one meeting with Fox and that was during Passover. She referred to her grandmother as a “frosty bitch” but didn’t stop there.

Love had been nominated for a Golden Globe and when asked about it said, "Every time you buy a Nirvana record, part of that money is not going to Kurt's child, or to me, it's going to a handful of Jew loan officers, Jew private banks, it's going to lawyers who are also bankers, it's going to sixty PAs."

In 2006 Mel Gibson was arrested for drunk driving.  According to a major online news source involved in reporting the story,  TMZ, the police report describes hows Gibson told the arresting deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

Now Gibson is involved in a new scandal involving his lover. The New York Daily News describes the tape contents, like this:

You're an embarrassment to me," Gibson tells ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, according to gossip site RadarOnline.com. "You look like a f---ing pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n----rs, it will be your fault."

On the tapes, Gibson repeatedly refers to Grigorieva as a "whore," "c--t" and "b----h," the Web site says.

The audio clips are reportedly also laden with sickening threats. "I am going to come and burn the f---ing house down," Gibson reportedly tells her. "How dare you act like such a b---h when I have been so f---ing nice?"

At one point, Gibson sounds like a child. After the "Braveheart" star called Grigorieva a "b---h," she responds, "I didn't do anything."

"Did so," Mel replies, according to RadarOnline.com.

Grigorieva, 40, has reportedly filed a restraining order against 54-year-old Gibson and maintains he hit her while she was holding the couple's child and knocked out a tooth..

But is this explosive rant the media blitz describes as particularly obnoxious a rare episode in a American life or does it reflect a problem that lingers in the culture when people get into tight spots?  An "Anonymous" said on a blog run by a law firm ." I hear worse on a regular basis"

Worse than--"You look like a fucking pig in heat and if you get raped by a pack of niggers it will be your fault?"

Well, Rush Limbaugh had this to say following an incident on a bus where black kids beat up on a white kid, "In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," Limbaugh said. I wonder if Obama's going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard."

And later on his website is this: "Eric Holder's advice and not be cowards about all this.  Let's have an open conversation, an honest conversation about all of our typical white grandmothers.  You had one, I had one.  Obama had one.  They're racists just like our students are.  ACORN, hey, nothing but racism fueling the pursuit of ACORN.  Greetings, folks.  How are you? (interruption) What do you mean you can't look at everything through a racial prism? Obama does.  And his media is looking at everything through a racial prism."

Limbaugh accuses the President many times of being involved in racial issues that are negative.  But what does Limbaugh do about the Mel Gibson rant?  Does he condemn it as many people in the public do?  No, indeed he addresses the problem as one belonging to the media (something he belongs to as well) and believes the whole thing that is happening is something that is just a little tit for tat episode where the media highlights the white problem but ignores the black. 

In other words, if you speak out against racism, you are racist?

On KSFO.Limbaugh told his radio listeners how the media is giving disproportionate coverage of Gibson's rants but doesn't pay attention to the New Black Panther Party chapter's leader who has had racial rants on YouTube.  The video says,  King Samir Shabazz says: “I hate white people. All of them! Every last iota of a cracker, I hate him! You want freedom? You're going to have to kill some crackers! You're going to have kill some of their babies.”

But is Shabazz of equal renown in the black community as Mel Gibson is to the white community or a member of a fringe group in America?  Statistics show that most black people have no association with either the black Muslims or the Black Panther party that continues to be even more on the fringe than members of the Sovereign Nation whose militant views are well-known and whose activities are said by the FBI to be particularly dangerous and that is white.  Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was a member of that group known for their racism and violence.

Social science research, medical research and research on the media continue to repeatedly underline the unequal treatment of minorities in America.  Recently a journalist professor's research material was outlined on Green Heritage News as showing the media more positively reflecting white as opposed to black members of the community when it comes to crime reporting.  Medical research has pointed to members of the black community being treated differently in hospitals.

Are Gibson's rants and Courtney Love's anti-semitic slurs aberrations in America or mirroring something America needs to re-examine in the area of human rights?