Gibson

I thought Rabbi Marc Gellman had a convicting perspective in this article on “what really matters in the Gibson case”.
 

I think some of the things he wrote are really worth thinking about:
 

“If it had not been for his Jesus movie, his outburst would have been filed under the large and smarmy Hollywood file of anti-Semitic entertainers like Errol Flynn and Marlon Brando, not to mention a long list of artists, poets and philosophers too numerous to mention here. Add in, if you wish, bigoted athletes or members of the restricted country club who smile at you on the street but hate you in their heart. And then why not throw onto this fetid pile of prejudice all those who tell Polish jokes or homosexual jokes or racist jokes.
The question of whether Mel Gibson is a bigot is not any easier to determine than whether many of us are bigots.  Just because we don’t get raging drunk and lose control of our dark side does not mean that we do not all have a dark side.  Bigotry is in us all to varying degrees and we ought not be so ready to label people as bigots as if such labels were easy to apply and not ultimately self-referential.  In pointing our index finger at Gibson as a bigot we must always be mindful of the other fingers that point back at us.
This is not exculpation, just a simple plea for perspective, and Mel Gibson’s case deserves perspective first of all because the world is filled with really dangerous anti-Semites, and Mel Gibson is not one of them.
Perspective and some measure of spiritual generosity are also needed because it seems that Mel Gibson is trying to repent. …but I am trained and I teach the lesson that any act of repentance deserves a corresponding and equally sincere offer of forgiveness. 
I also hope that all of us casters of stones use this unfortunate and minor story to reflect on the many ways we are all broken and poisoned and distorted by a hundred hatreds that are in some ways even worse than his because we live in the illusion that he is the only bigot.  It is said that you can only make music through a broken reed.  I hope Mel and all of us can use the music of our brokenness to make a symphony of forgiveness our world waits to hear.”