Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish

Liberals first, and conservatives in short succession, have taken to the idiom of disease like ducks to water. Left and right now insist, based on wispy pseudoscience, that just about every human excess is an illness as organic as cancer or diabetes ~ilana

Well, well, it appears the South Park depiction of Mel Gibson bouncing off walls he had freshly “coated” in bodily waste is not far off.

Gibson didn’t quite relieve himself in jail, but he tried, furiously fumbling with that famous fly. Had he not been cuffed, Mel might have unleashed more than a torrent of invective on his jailers.

It usually falls to liberals to fend for A-list reprobates. Left to Barbara Walters, Paris Hilton’s porn debut, in which she made narcissistic love to the camera, (i.e. herself) was elevated to a PG-rated tale of innocence betrayed.

Now conservatives, usually attuned to the coarsening culture, and fierce about defending cops, are airbrushing Mel Gibson in the same way (although, unlike Paris, he doesn’t need makeup).

Mel’s many conservative fans have downplayed his vulgar public conduct. He cussed cops who were being decent to him, threatened to ruin them, Russell Crowed a phone, and generally behaved like a hog high on his own power.

Then there was that other indelicate matter. “When wine goes in, secrets come out,” says the Talmud. Mel’s secret had been bubbling below the surface for some time. Drink lowers inhibitions. In his uninhibited state, Mel raged against the generic Jew of his belief system—the Illuminati who manipulate world affairs from the center of the earth and are responsible for unleashing Pokemon on children around the world.

Verbatim translation: “F*****g Jews. … The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” From the deputy Mel demanded, “Are you a Jew?”

In his eventual apology, another ridiculous and redundant public ritual, Gibson retracted the Jew baiting, and deftly introduced the illness angle, as his handlers, no doubt, advised.

The Delphic oracles of the disease theory of delinquency (the “experts”) have slapped all manner of misconduct with diagnostic labels. At the root of this diseasing of behavior is the eradication of good and bad. Placing bad behavior beyond the strictures of traditional morality, moreover, makes it amenable to external, “therapeutic” or state interventions.

Liberals first, and conservatives in short succession, have taken to the idiom of disease like ducks to water. Left and right now insist, based on wispy pseudoscience, that just about every human excess is an illness as organic as cancer or diabetes.

A teacher who seduces her underage pupil has to be “sick,” or else she’d not have indulged her fantasies. The same post hoc illogic is applied to the morbidly obese: if you overeat, you’re diseased!

Are you a dad who dotes on his kids when they are around, but fails to mail them child support money when they return to mom? There’s a Harvard professor by the name of Dr. John Ratey who’ll cheerily diagnose you with “Environmental Dependency Disorder”: you remember your kids only when they are present.

And so it goes: the arsonist has “pyromania,” the thief is inflicted with “kleptomania,” and Bill Clinton is not promiscuous, but a “sex-addict.”

Once the doyens of “disease” were through sanitizing Mel’s volitional habits and chosen lifestyle, the ersatz defender of Jewish interests, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, stepped in with his ministrations.

As unpleasant as Gibson’s indiscretions were, they were harmless. Sticks and stones and all that. The actor has never lifted a hand to a Jew. Yet Foxman was in high dudgeon—and adamant to milk Mel’s fall from grace to the utmost.

Foxman had more to say about Gibson than he had about Seattle’s Jihadist du jour, Naveed Afzal Haq. Last week Haq murdered a Jewish woman and critically injured five other women at the downtown Jewish Federation building.

The ADL’s website issued only the tersest of statements. It made no mention of the dead, the injured, and the Muslim. A glance at the League’s site and a visitor from Deep Space might get the impression marauding Christian Cossacks posed the greatest danger to Jewish continuity. Needless to say Foxman has remained mum about the perils to Jews from Muslim mass immigration into the United States.

As a representative of the Jewish community, albeit self-appointed, Foxman needs lessons in etiquette. It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act graciously—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering. Gibson may be uncouth, but Foxman is as grubby.

©2006 Ilana Mercer

   WorldNetDaily

   August 4