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Message |
    
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 449
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 12:20 pm: |     |
January 30, 2004 -- 'YOU'RE GOING to have to go on record. The Holocaust happened, right?" Peggy Noonan asks of Mel Gibson in the Reader's Digest for March.
Gibson: "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."
I think he's being a little evasive. "Atrocities happen"? Sounds like a line from South Park. "He worked in a concentration camp in France"? Worked as a prisoner I guess?
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Tom Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 1930
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 12:38 pm: | |
I disagree with your view, though all I am seeing is this quote, with no other context. Where can I read more? He didn't say atrocities happen. That would be putting into an abstract concept as if it were an every day thing. He said atrocities happened. I think there's a difference.
Tom Reingold the prissy-pants
There is nothing
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themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 451
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 12:55 pm: | |
Well, he could have said "The Holocaust, as generally understood, did happen and the Jewish people were its primary victims." or something simple. His answer was needlessly wordy and brought in generalizations that might seem to create a context in which the Holocaust is compared to other things to put it "in perspective". If I were in his spot I would have been more definite.
His old man is a crackpot Holocaust denier (denyer?).
You're right about "happen/happened".
I think that is a link from Drudgereport. |
Tom Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 1932
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 1:09 pm: | |
Yeah, so he's inarticulate. He's an actor, which doesn't necessarily qualify him as a commentator.
Are you inferring his opinion from his father's?
I don't have an opinion of him, but I think you're being unfair.
Tom Reingold the prissy-pants
There is nothing
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Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 2839
Registered: 10-1999
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 1:17 pm: | |
quote:Gibson: "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."
Gibson sat down with conservative Catholic writer Noonan to speak of his controversial film, "The Passion of the Christ," to explain his faith - which he says became a strong force in his life after years of being "a monster," having become "spiritually bankrupt" in the thrall of success. And Gibson admits his spiritual life is "nowhere complete yet. I'm still so full of flaws." Noonan pushed him about the Holocaust because of accusations that the actor's father questions the attempted extermination of all Jews by Hitler. Of his dad, Gibson says, "My dad taught me my faith, and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life."
Source: NY Post. He's not going as far as his father, who actually says that the Holocaust couldn't have happened because the Nazi's couldn't have disposed of all of the bodies. But, he's being evasive (maybe to avoid seeming to call his father a liar). But, the fact that he is being evasive, makes it look as if he is minimizing it. |
lumpyhead
Citizen
Username: Lumpyhead
Post Number: 649
Registered: 3-2002
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 2:15 pm: | |
Seems Mel has fallen from Hollywood grace for making "The Passion". Didn't the same thing happen to Martin Scorcese when he made "The Last Temptation of Christ"? And I have no idea what his father thought. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 823
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 2:34 pm: | |
No, the Catholic League went after Scorcese. Hollywood didn't. |
Dave
Citizen
Username: Dave
Post Number: 6269
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 2:37 pm: | |
Katzantzakis (the writer of The Last Temptation) was excommunicated for depicting Jesus as too human. Gibson, however, is being praised by Rome. |
guessagain
Citizen
Username: Guessagain
Post Number: 13
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 2:42 pm: | |
But the Pope's office is now backpeddling over his endorsement of the film. Bad P.R. for the papacy? |
Ukealalio
Citizen
Username: Ukealalio
Post Number: 404
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 1:33 am: | |
Sounds like, It wasn't so bad but I'm not anti-semetic, some of my best friends are Jews" to me.
Mad Max for real. |
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 2164
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 7:16 am: | |
Maybe this is political correctness run amok. Not only does one have to have the PC point of view, you must now state it eloquently and with theatrical conviction. Potentially, if one cannot describe the Holocaust in language worthy of Winston Churchill, you are at risk of being called a Holocaust denier. |
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