c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Why do public figures damage their public images by spewing words of prejudice and contempt?
Recently, Sen. George Allen, R-Va., former Atlanta mayor and civil rights leader Andrew Young and actor/director Mel Gibson have seriously harmed their personal reputations and shattered the superficial protection of celebrity. Because of their self-inflicted wounds, the three men have raised troubling questions about who they really are and what they truly believe.
At a campaign stop in rural Virginia, Allen insulted S.R. Sidarth, a 20-year-old Indian-American man who attended the event. Sidarth, a volunteer working for Allen’s Democratic opponent, was singled out for derision and ridicule. The senator said: “This fellow here … with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is … Let’s give a welcome to macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”
The term “macaca” means either a species of monkey or, in Europe, a racial insult to African immigrants. Allen is mentioned as a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2008; if he runs, his racist comment will surely haunt his campaign. Ironically, Sidarth, a senior at the University of Virginia, does not need Allen’s condescending “Welcome to America” remark because he was born and raised in Virginia.
Naturally, Allen issued the standard “apology” used by politicians: “I would never want to demean him (Sidarth) as an individual. I do apologize if he’s offended by that.” He later called and apologized personally to Sidarth.
Earlier this year, Young, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter administration, became head of “Working Families for Wal-Mart,” an organization funded by the retail giant to improve its sagging public image. During an interview with the Los Angeles Sentinel, an African-American newspaper, Young was asked about charges that Wal-Mart has driven traditional “mom-and-pop stores” from America’s cities.
Young responded: “Those are the people (the owners of family-owned stores) who have been over-charging us. … I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First, it was the Jews, then it was the Koreans and now it’s the Arabs; very few black people own these stores.”
The public uproar was predictable. Young first apologized: “Those comments run contrary to everything I have dedicated my life to. … I apologize. … I retract those comments. And I ask forgiveness of those I have offended.” Then the former aide to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. resigned his Wal-Mart position. The company immediately accepted Young’s departure and distanced itself from his remarks.
Young’s outburst comes in the twilight of his public career. Sadly, his intemperate words may be remembered more than his earlier efforts as a leader in America’s civil rights struggle. Young, a United Church of Christ minister, surely knows the biblical words “How the mighty have fallen” (2 Samuel 1:19).
In late July, Gibson was arrested for drunken driving in Malibu, Calif. His reckless actions endangered his own life as well as those of others. When police arrested him, Gibson unloaded a barrage of sexist and anti-Semitic remarks.
Like other public figures in trouble, he, too, offered an apology and a recognition that with his life spinning out of control, he needed atonement and repentance.
Several weeks after his arrest, Gibson was sentenced to three years probation and court-ordered participation in an alcoholism recovery program. His driver’s license was restricted for three months, and he will pay about $1,600 in fines and court fees.
Gibson’s Hollywood friends brushed aside charges he was an anti-Semite, while others excused his ugly words as the result of too much alcohol, his embarrassment at being arrested, and the possibility of going to jail. However, critics said Gibson’s anti-women and anti-Jewish remarks reflect his true beliefs.
Who, then, is the real Mel Gibson? Is it the movie star who claims to have found God and religion, the man who wrote, directed and produced the highly controversial “The Passion of the Christ” as cinematic proof of his ultra-conservative Catholic faith?
Or does the Latin maxim “In vino veritas” (“In wine, the truth”) explain and reveal Gibson’s deepest feelings?
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
KRE/PH END RUDIN
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