Thursday, Dec. 09, 2010
Mel Gibson Loses His Cool — and Any Vestigial Public Goodwill
Mel Gibson is no stranger to public opprobrium. His movies, his anti-semitic statements, and some of his beliefs have earned him a radioactive reputation among some groups in the past. But that disaffection turned to repulsion and, in some cases, concern for his mental health, when phone calls between him and the mother of his eighth child became public. So violent were his emotions and so crudely expressed — a cascade of F bombs and C words, interspersed with racist and sexist insults — that therapists began to wonder if he'd fallen off the wagon or was having an anxiety attack. Oksana Grigorieva, Gibson's erstwhile girlfriend, didn't come off totally innocent, at some points clearly pouring fuel on the fire of Gibson's rage.