"Sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred"

Christopher Hitchens, who by all accounts certainly knows a thing or two about behaving like an asshole while intoxicated, weighs in on Mel Gibson's public meltdown in yesterday's Slate.

I was just in the middle of writing a long and tedious essay, about how to tell a real anti-Semite from a person who too-loudly rejects the charge of anti-Semitism, when a near-perfect real-life example came to hand. That bad actor and worse director Mel Gibson, pulled over for the alleged offense of speeding and the further alleged offense of speeding under the influence, decided that he needed to demand of the arresting officer whether he was or was not Jewish and that he furthermore needed to impart the information that all the world's wars are begun by those of Semitic extraction.

Call me thin-skinned if you must, but I think that this qualifies. I also think that the difference between the blood-alcohol levels—and indeed the speed limits—that occasioned the booking are insufficient to explain the expletives (as Gibson has since claimed in a typically self-pitying and verbose statement put out by his publicist). One does not abruptly decide, between the first and second vodka, or the ticks of the indicator of velocity, that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are valid after all.

Ahem. You'll want to read the whole thing, and savor it; there's nothing quite as bracing as Hitch in full cry. (The title of this post is a throwaway line from a bit later in the piece.)

Is Mel Gibson an anti-Semite? By Christopher Hitchens (Slate, July 31, 2006)