He is playing the victim blaming his offensive behavior and remarks on his lifetime battle with the "disease" of alcoholism. I think his real "disease" is that he is an obnoxious biggot who drinks too much.

Admittedly, he does look like Saddam with the beard now. He could play Nasrallah too.

What a sad end to a great career. Mel at his best, imho, was as Colonel Hal Moore in "We Were Soldiers", a cinematic retelling of the Seventh Cavalry's pitched battle with the North Vietnamese Army at the Ia Drang Valley in November of 1965. It was a fantastic movie, as war movies go. The NVA Regulars would make the Hezboallah look like girl scouts. They brought their "A" game to the table every day, and they didn't hide behind civilians. The Seventh Cav won a great victory under the leadership of Hal Moore, and that victory was earned against a brave and determined foe fighting on his home field.

I saw "The Passion of the Christ". As a Christian, I was moved. Laying it on the Jews as much as he did (which, I might add, is what classical Passion Plays did) instead of emphasizing Pontius Pilate's imperitive to keep order in Judea, sort of gives the game away. It's sad to see the old anti-Semitism of the rank and file Catholic Church rear its ugly head, but there you have it. And I say this as a Christian.

Mel has had cover from the conservative community because Passion came out the same year as "Farenheit 9/11", and was seen as an answer to Hollywood's materialism and emphasis on things of This World. Hollywood is also of the Left. The Passion was said to be an answer if not from the Right, then from the forces of Tradition and the Catholic Church. Sadly, Mel appears not to have followed the instructions of John Paul II to make peace with the Jews.

Someone, it might have been Orwell, once remarked that anti-Semitism is the Socialism of Fools. Sadly, this is in fashion in Europe once again. It never went out of style in the Arab world. Too bad Mel descended into this idiocy; I had reason to respect him until this time. Christians and Jews are natural allies in the struggle against Islamic Fascism. Too bad Mel never figured that out. Oh well, too much like his father, I guess.

Message to MG : Drinking and driving do not mix! Cliche but true in your case.