Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa

Mel Gibson, it would seem, has sobered up. And found a publicist.

In what certainly appears to be a major attempt at damage control following his drunken tirade in the early hours of Friday, Mel Gibson did some serious grovelling in a statement he made about his DUI arrest and the anti-Semitic remarks he made while intoxicated.

According to the Washington Post, Gibson's grovel goes like this:

"After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person. I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said. Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the deputies involved for my belligerent behavior. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry. I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health."

As apologies go, that's pretty all-encompassing. Whoever wrote it, whether it was Gibson himself or (as I tend to suspect) a publicist specializing in damage control, it covers all the bases and does as much as is realistic in distancing Gibson from his "despicable" remarks.

More importantly, it tries to put the story to bed before the weekend's over and it becomes fodder for all the celebrity news shows on Monday -- not to mention the Today Show and Good Morning America.

Will it work? Will Mel Gibson be forgiven for his drunken tirade? Will the unexpurgated first draft of his police report see the light of day -- not to mention his mug shot and the videotape of his sobriety test?

The taint of anti-Semitism has surrounded Gibson for many years, and his drunken antics this weekend have only exacerbated them. As Rabbi Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Times, “If it’s true what’s reported, frequently hatred, bigotry and prejudice, which is controlled, explodes at moments of stress and crisis. Liquor loosens the tongue of what’s in the mind and in the heart, and in his mind and in his heart is his conspiracy theory about Jews and hatred of Jews.”

Not to mention the fact that, according to the Times, Gibson's company is developing a four-hour mini-series on the Holocaust for ABC, "in what was widely seen as an effort to patch up his relations with parts of the Jewish community." ABC isn't commenting and the status of that project is uncertain.

How will the Hollywood community react to all this? Will it affect the release of his next film, “Apocalypto,” scheduled to be put out by, of all studios, Disney? Will Gibson be seen as an alcoholic who in a drunken stupor said things he didn't mean -- or was his outburst like the Washington definition of a gaffe: when a politician says something he really believes.

It'll be interesting to see how this story unfolds over the next few days and weeks. And it'll be even more interesting to see who comes to his defense and who doesn't.

Tom Moran

Note: There is a seeming factual error in this blog entry, and probably in the previous one. I was assuming that the anti-Semitic Gibson quotes were taken from the second draft report, and that the original report was still supressed. Based on what Harvey Levin of TMZ.com told "Good Morning America's" Kate Snow, it would seem that he was able to obtain four pages of the original, unexpurgated report. I apologize for the error.