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ONE MAN’S FLIP IS ANOTHER MAN’S FLOP
BY PETER KURTH (published 03.22.04)
Back up, America! Rewind that film! Your columnist has some flip-flopping to
do.
You heard me –
I’m a flip-flopper. Despite
all you’ve been told by the White House, the major media, Ann Coulter
and the Ouija board, it takes a big man to flip-flop and I’m going to
be the first one on the block to do it.
I prefer the term
“flip-flop” to “waffle,” because
“waffling” makes it sound like I haven’t made up my mind,
and I have. I’m flip-flopping
absolutely. I’m turning 180
degrees. I’m going the whole
nine yards, even though no one has yet figured out what those nine yards
refer to. You can look it up.
What I’m flip-flopping
about is Mel Gibson. Yes, Mel
Gibson, a man I wrote off two weeks ago in this column as “a
shameless and repulsive movie star.”
He may still be a shameless and repulsive movie star, but from now
on he’s got my vote. Why? Because Mel Gibson has
“doubts” about George W. Bush.
That’s right –
Mel Gibson has doubts about Bush. To
be exact, he’s had doubts “of late” about Bush and his
filthy war in Iraq.
“It’s all to do
with these weapons of mass destruction that we can’t seem to find,
and why did we go over there?” says Mel, sounding confused. Never mind: Anyone who has doubts about Bush is a
hero to me. That’s a promise,
and I won’t be flip-flopping on it.
Another thing I’m not
flip-flopping on is Mel’s Bible movie, whose name will never pass my
lips again, not after the hate mail I’ve received since I first
brought it up. I had no idea that
Christian fanatics used words like that, but there you have it --
it’s like 12-year-old boys. If
people knew how disgusting they’d become, they’d drown them at
birth. Or maybe you missed the story
about the Smelly Sneaker Contest in Montpelier
on St. Patrick’s Day? You can
look that up, too.
It’s easier for me to
flip-flop about Mel Gibson now that Americans, in a major flip-flop, have
knocked the Movie Whose Name Will Never Pass My Lips Again from its number
one position and replaced it with a remake of Dawn of the Dead. As a Reuters news headline put it on
Sunday, “Zombies Push Jesus from Top of North American Box
Office.”
I knew they would if I waited
long enough. Flip-flopping
isn’t as hard as you think – all kinds of people are doing
it. Last week, voters in Spain
flipped-flopped themselves from “our brave allies” to
“cowardly appeasers.”
The president of Poland,
echoing Mel, flip-flopped by saying that the Bush administration had “deceived”
him about those weapons of mass destruction – “we were taken
for a ride!” Italy, Hungary,
the Netherlands and Honduras are ready to flip-flop any minute, leaving
only 28 flavors – excuse me – partners in the Coalition of the
Willing. Can it be long before Tony
Blair gets flip-flopped out of a job?
If you’re worried that
Mel Gibson has flip-flopped into a weak, whining, waffling weenie of the
Satanic Liberal Left -- don’t.
According to reports, Mel’s “next foray into the weighty
world of religious film-making” will be about Hanukkah.
“The story that's
always fired my imagination is the Book of Maccabees,” Mel said last
week in an interview with Sean Hannity, the right-wing pundit and idiot du
jour, whose new book, Deliver Us From
Evil: Defeating Terrorism,
Despotism, and Liberalism, in that order, is number one on The New York
Times Bestseller List, right ahead of Mel’s own Book of the Movie – that is, the Movie Whose Name Will
Never Pass My Lips Again.
According to the website
Comingsoon.com – no, it’s not about the Rapture, and it’s
not a porn site, either -- the Maccabees were “Jewish guerilla
fighters who led a successful rebellion against Greek conquerors 165 years
before Christ.” According to
Mel, “The Maccabee family stood up, and they made war, they stuck by
their guns, and they came out winning. It's like a Western." And according to a lot of newspapers, all
copying from the same press release, Mel’s been taking flak already “from
some quarters of the Jewish church.”
“My answer would be,
'Thanks but no thanks,’” says Abe Foxman, executive director of
the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman
knows a church when he sees one:
“The last thing we need is to convert Jewish history into a
western. I would prefer to leave
[it] to Steven Spielberg.” He
may have to flip-flop on that, because, what with the ticket sales, the Book of the Movie, the soundtrack,
pay-TV, video, DVD and that bestselling line of “Passion Nail”
pendants, Mel Gibson stands to make something like $700 million on the
Movie Whose Name – you know the rest.
That’s a lot of nails, as
they say in Hollywood. And if they
aren’t saying it now they will be soon, because every single person
who had a chance to be a part of Mel’s movie and turned it down, from
the highest studio head to the lowest body-waxer – yea, unto the very
popcorn-poppers at a theater near you – has been flip-flopping like
crazy to feed at Mel’s trough.
Right now, Mel Gibson could say that the world is balanced on the
back of a giant turtle and half the population would flip-flop itself into
believing it.
Meantime, science says
there’s a 67 percent chance that God exists. If you know your Darwin, that’s a
flip-flop, too. According to a new
book, The Probability of God, the
Almighty’s existence can be demonstrated by Bayes’ Theorem, which starts with the “prior
probability” of a theory or hypothesis and, “by balancing the
various factors that could affect a situation,” comes up with a
“posterior probability” that it’s either true or
false. Either way, it’s a long
ticket line.
Flip-flop – signing
out.
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