The Mel Gibson Expletives

I never thought I would agree with Tracy Morgan, of all people, but I love his quote on the recent Mel Gibson recorded rant of expletives: "The Mel Gibson tapes…calling women bitches and using the N- word, they ain't nothing but hiphop. He stole that concept from Lil Wayne."

I am so tired of hearing about what Mel Gibson says in private conversations.  is he being rude and offensive?  Absolutely.  Is it national news?  No.  Does it warrant boycotting his movies?  If you think yes, I suspect you have an overly positive image of humanity.

When people get pissed off, they say really stupid things.  And I'm not saying being mad or drunk excuses the behavior.  I am saying that this should largely be between him and the targets of his rants, not the entire country.  I'm also saying this is a fairly common occurrence.  And, as Morgan points out, significant aspects of our culture encourage this sort of vocabulary.

Part of it is we don't always connect words to their full meanings.  I've talked about getting "gypped" most of my life, never realizing it's a derogatory term for Gypies. 

Moving to Wisconsin has introduced me to phrases like "Jewing down the price," and "don't be a Jew" (i.e. cheap), and when discussing this phenomena with students I had one who admitted her father used the phrases regularly, even though he had nothing against Jews.  (I suggested he might want to weed those phrases out of his vocabulary regardless).

I hear atheists exclaim "God damn it!"  on a pretty regular basis.  Clearly they don't mean that literally.

Again, I'm not excusing Gibson.  I'm just tired of it being a national crisis.  He should apologize to whoever he was speaking.  He should not need to apologize to the entire world.