(Mark Hammermeister)

Two weeks ago, Phil Mushnick, a respected veteran sports writer for The New York Post, published a column about the Brooklyn Nets’ new brand identity, as designed with the help of Jay-Z. The team—previously known as the New Jersey Nets—had switched their colors to black and white. “Why not have him apply the full Jay-Z treatment?” Mr. Mushnick suggested, referring to the team’s part-owner. “Why the Brooklyn Nets when they can be the New York N------s. The cheerleaders could be the Brooklyn B---hes or Hoes ...”

Once upon a time, a remark like that would have led to a call for Mr. Mushnick’s head ... or at least a resignation. And while several media outlets picked up on the story on their Web sites, the “scandal” was a non-starter. Mr. Mushnick was not reprimanded by The Post. Forbes even defended him.

If the story of Mr. Mushnick seemed novel, though, it was only because it didn’t happen on Twitter. At times, it seems as if the microblogging platform was designed to ease the glide path of users’ feet directly into their mouths as they dash off unthinking, offensive commentary: Cee Lo Green calling a fan of The Voice ‘gay’; CNN commentator Roland Martin’s homophobic tweets after the Super Bowl; Chris Brown being Chris Brown (his response to a hater: “Grow up n——a!!! Dick in da ass lil boy.”)

Ashton Kutcher's "brownface" PopChip commercial

Nearly four years after the election of a black man as president, intolerant attitudes are having a cultural moment. And one inspiration may well be Mr. Obama himself, whose occupation of the White House seems to have been misinterpreted as a signal that the country has overcome the ugliness of its racist past and we are now all free (at last) to air our most contemptible prejudices.

Of course, not all racists, sexists, anti-Semites and homophobes are created equal. There’s the bilious misogyny of a Rush Limbaugh and the unhinged anti-Semitism of a John Galliano or a Mel Gibson or a Delmon Young. There’s the mass-stupidity of all of those Hunger Games fans outraged by the casting of an African-American actor as a character they thought was white and the semi-ironic, "hipster racism" displayed by Lesley Arfin, a writer for the HBO show Girls.

The latter form was dubbed “ironic racism” after Ms. Arfin responded on Twitter to criticisms that the show didn’t feature enough women of color, cracking, “What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.”

The tweet, quickly deleted, spurred bloggers to uncover other damning evidence of Ms. Arfin’s racist attitudes—including a 2007 interview on the Huffington Post, in which she noted the n-word “was a great word. It packs so much punch.” (To give more context, Ms. Arfin was asked to pick between three 'hate' terms as her favorite.) Gavin McInnes, Ms. Arfin’s former employer at VICE, jumped to her defense—not that he’s an especially respected authority on tolerance.

It seems that with the rigid speak-no-evil precepts of political correctness now as out of fashion as stonewashed jeans, the rules have become a little fuzzy. It’s interesting to see just what sort of parochialism is forgiven and what is not. The hit Comedy Central series Tosh.0 includes a segment called “Is It Racist?” that is itself, arguably, racist (it’s definitely stupid). Meanwhile, ESPN employee Anthony Federico was fired for headlining a story about Jeremy Lin “A Chink in the Armor,” though he later claimed the implication was inadvertent. There was Ashton Kutcher’s controversial “brown face” ad for PopChips and Jon Hamm’s not-that-controversial blackface in a special episode of 30 Rock.

It seemed an auspicious time for lunch with Taki Theodoracopulos, the charismatic 75-year-old Greek socialite, pundit and founder of The American Conservative, who has been making racist remarks—and getting away with it—for decades now. Despite a reputation for venomous rhetoric, his byline has graced the pages of Hamptons Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Press, The Spectator, The Sunday Times, Esquire and Newsweek.

More recently, Mr. Theodoracopulos has been writing mostly for his own Web site, Taki’s Magazine. While the site bears the tagline: “Cocktails, Countesses & Mental Caviar,” it is perhaps better known for a collection of race-baiting essays and blog posts by a rogue’s gallery of politically incorrect luminaries, including Pat Buchanan, Mr. McInnes and Redneck Manifesto author Jim Goad. In early April, the site posted an essay by John Derbyshire called “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” about what children should know about African-Americans (“Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally ... Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods”). Mr. Derbyshire was also a contributor to National Review, but not for long. The Review’s editor, Rich Lowry, quickly cut him loose, writing that the post “constitutes a kind of letter of resignation.”

Mr. Derbyshire quickly retreated from the public stage, and the news that he was undergoing chemotherapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia may have even garnered him some sympathy points. But just a month later, Mr. Derbyshire landed a new gig on VDare.com, an anti-immigration site. His first article extolled the virtues of white supremacy.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center wasn’t surprised by the development. “More often than not, real racism lies right below the surface, and what holds it back is fear of criticism or fear of losing one’s career,” he said, noting that the center considers VDare a hate site.

Such outspoken racism is increasing, he said. “At a macro-level, what we’re seeing is a lot of white people feeling like they are losing their country ... that after Obama’s election, they’re drowning in a tide of color.”

The ethos of Taki's Mag (TakiMag.com)

Naturally, Mr. Derbyshire is still writing for Taki, who a few weeks after the notorious blog post was sitting in the Midtown restaurant Cognac, spooning up pink lobster bisque and chasing it with two large glasses of pinot grigio. Between bites, Mr. Theodoracopulos gossiped about his time working for—where else?—The New York Observer.

“I called A.M. Rosenthal from The New York Times ‘Abie,’ and his wife thought that was anti-Semitic,” he recalled in his languidly aristocratic accent. “How is that anti-Semitic?”

A genial man in a dapper blue suit and sparkling cuff links, Mr. Theodoracopulos bore a strong resemblance to Anthony Hopkins. He remembered being called into the office of then-owner Arthur Carter after Mr. Rosenthal’s wife, Shirley Lord, called to complain.

“Arthur would say ‘What is the problem, Taki?’” Mr. Theodoracopulos laughed. “I’d tell him, ‘The problem is that I’ve run out of shoe polish, Arthur. Would you mind if I took some from your hair?’”

He smiled.

“You get it?” Mr. Theodoracopulos asked. “Because his hair always looked like he rubbed it with shoe polish!”
When Fraser Nelson took over as editor of the Spectator, where Taki contributed a regular column, he jokingly told the columnist he would be fired. “He said, ‘No one is complaining about you anymore, Taki, so why are we paying you?’” Mr. Theodoracopulos recalled, snickering like a man who was having the last laugh. And perhaps he is.

In his inaugural editor’s “diary,” Mr. Nelson noted a change in the air. “It’s not that Taki is conforming to the world,” he wrote. “The world, I think, is finally conforming to him.”

Racial resentment seems especially uncharitable coming from someone like Mr. Theodoracopulos, a jet-setting playboy of good standing. His father, in addition to being an Olympic gold medalist in rowing, was a shipping baron. His grandfather, Panagiotis Poulitsas, was briefly the prime minister of Greece. After a career as a professional tennis player, and a short stint working in his father’s offices, Taki was recruited by Arnaud de Borchgrave, then senior editor of Newsweek, to go to Vietnam as a photographer.

“I didn’t want to work for my father, I didn’t want to be a shipper, or a tycoon’s son,” Mr. Theodoracopulos said of his beginnings in journalism.

He’s been married twice, currently to his wife of 31 years, Princess Alexandra Carlota Sophy von Schoenburg-Hartenstein, and has two children, “who have never disappointed me,” he said. His son, J.T., is a bike messenger; his daughter, Mandolyna, runs Taki’s Magazine. “She is actually the brains behind the site, because I don’t really read the Internet,” Mr. Theodoracopulos told us proudly.

The idea for the Web site came about after Mr. Theodoracopulos ceased his involvement with The American Conservative in 2007.

“At a certain time, I had to take a step back and say ‘Do I want to keep giving millions of dollars to magazines that no one reads, or something else?’” he recalled. Mandolyna, who spent the ’90s working for publications like Hamptons Magazine and, yes, The New York Observer (as a fact-checker under Graydon Carter, who not only hired her father for his original tenure at the Observer, but who went on to employ both father and daughter at Vanity Fair), then took off a decade to work as an interior designer before returning to journalism.

“I made peace with my dad years ago,” the London-based Ms. Theodoracopulos told us over the phone. “It’s really nice to have a family business.”

The only area where she and her father disagree, she told us, was the Middle East. (“I’m not saying Israel shouldn’t exist,” he said, “but they need to give back the occupied territories.”)

“Be nice to my dad,” Ms. Theodoracopulos warned before hanging up. “He’s one of the nicest, sweetest men you’ll ever meet.”

Taki Theodoracopulos with Arianna Huffington (Patrick McMullan)

MR. THEODORACOPULOS can be charming in person, which might explain how he’s been able to maintain some of his social cachet despite his disreputable opinions. Though he credits William Buckley at the National Review with giving him his first job, it wasn’t until he started his High Life social column in The Spectator that he found his niche. “I was a natural,” Mr. Theodoracopulos said. “People couldn’t believe what I wrote in High Life, but I didn’t care about access, I already had access. I knew what was going on. You have to get your foot in the door writing what you know about, and this was what I knew.”

That particular beat has shrunk with time. “Society doesn’t exist anymore ... or if it does, it doesn’t go out,” Taki sniffed. He is ditching his London home because, he explained, the city is “becoming overcrowded with Arabs.” He is more often found in his apartment on East 71st Street and is plotting a sailing trip to Cannes, where, he said, he will be shooting a movie with Norman Mailer’s son Michael.

During lunch, Mr. Theodoracopulos employed a number of epithets for various ethnic and racial groups. The n-word rolled off his tongue. He was unapologetic about his use of such terms, and made us uncomfortably complicit by leaning in conspiratorially and smiling while saying some of the more horrific things we’ve ever heard outside of a Quentin Tarantino film. He expressed disgust for professional athletes: “They have 12 kids and beat up on their wives, and she can’t go to court because she’s black and doesn’t have an education.” He praised Robert E. Lee and condemned Abraham Lincoln as “a murdering traitor.” He chuckled as he told us the story of a controversial Sunday Times editorial he once wrote: “I said that I thought I saw a gorilla once at Wimbleton. It was Venus Williams.”

Asked if he considered himself racist, Mr. Theodoracopulos shrugged. “It was very bad taste, but blacks make fun of us, why can’t we make fun of them?”

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Theodoracopulos’s mouth has gotten him into trouble over the years. “In this country, there are tremendous libel suits ... I’ve lost five libel cases myself,” he told us proudly. “Not four. Five.”
He sat serenely while we probed him about his xenophobia, then worked himself into a lather about the Saudis. “They are the ones who finance all the terror,” he said. “They eat their own shit. And we’re supposed to call them royals? These are not royal families ... I call them ‘ruling towelheads.’”

But even as he flaunted his most noxious opinions, Mr. Theodoracopulos was oddly eager to clear the record on at least one charge against him. Asked about an article in which he referred to himself as a “soi-disant anti-Semite,” he bristled.

“No! Everyone gets that quote wrong, because they don’t speak French. Soi-disant means ‘so-called.’ I am saying that everyone else calls me an anti-Semite!”

As in most matters, his opinion on this differs from that of the media. As The Guardian wrote, in fact, the term is generally translated as “self-styled.” Mr. Theodoracopulos indignantly told us that he had spoken French for most of his life and knew better than journalists what the translation was.

As if to prove that he had nothing against Jews, he continued, “All my WASP friends in America say, ‘What happened to our money, Taki?’ And I tell them, ‘You drank it all away, and the Jews and n---ers were able to get it.”

It seemed like a good time to mention we were Jewish.

“And you don’t drink a lot, do you?” Mr. Theodoracopulos replied with a smile. “You can’t ever say that the Jews are drunks. The WASPS are drunks.”

With that, the Greek socialite motioned for the waiter and ordered us a second glass of white wine. As it turned out, Mr. Theodoracopulos was right about one thing: we spent the rest of the day nursing a massive headache.

The movie is a study of clinical depression and eccentricity, two subjects with which the star has had some firsthand experience, about the need to extend tolerance and compassion for people who are not exactly on the same page as everybody else. It has elements of soul-searching reflected through the lens of black comedy, but once you recover from the basic conceit, you won't find much to laugh about. Mr. Gibson, looking weary and ravaged, plays Walter Black, a hopelessly unhappy toy company executive who has lost his ability to take interest in life. He's tried drugs and therapy without much success, and sleeps for hours at a time, day and night. Meanwhile, his family is falling apart around him. His wife, Meredith (Ms. Foster), struggles to function, but gets no help from her husband. When he sleepwalks through office hours, drinks excessively and even flagellates himself to stay awake, she finally throws Walter out of the house. Their nervy 17-year-old son, Porter (the talented Anton  Yelchin), who despises his absentee father, is in big trouble at school for running a lucrative business ghosting and selling homework to his classmates; their youngest son, Henry (Riley Thomas, a standard-issue moppet from Hollywood Casting), is victimized by bullies and whining to get his daddy back. Then, in the serious stages of committing suicide, the dejected Walter discards all of his belongings in the trash and experiences a miracle. In a dumpster, he finds a discarded glove puppet with the face of a beaver and finds a way to communicate. He sends a note to everyone he knows, informing them the hand puppet has been prescribed by his doctor as a form of rebirth, and insisting they address it instead of him.  After an understandable period of adjustment, people go along with the gag. Speaking through the cockney voice of the beaver, Mr. Gibson sounds like a gravelly Michael Caine. Henry loves it; Walter's sex life with Meredith is rejuvenated; and the beaver even inspires a new toy that rescues his company from bankruptcy, to the joy of the frustrated marketing director (Cherry Jones). Obviously, a complete mental breakdown is on the way as the film shifts from whimsy to lurid melodrama from the Black Swan school of dark delusion. Add a teen subplot about a mysterious cheerleader (Jennifer Lawrence, from the ghastly, critically overrated Winter's Bone) who pays Porter $500 to write her graduation speech. Too bad he didn't also write the screenplay.

The Beaver has moments of cogent emotional realism, but most of the time you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Jodie Foster's balanced, gimlet-eyed and level-headed direction prevents the eccentricity from getting too wonky. The result is an offbeat film that is definitely not everyone's cup of Prozac, but its understated, introspective sense of self-discovery and reinvention in the most fragile of lives is admirable. I did not find the redemption and rehabilitation in Kyle Killen's script totally persuasive; the ending is too tidy to piggy back the heavy metaphoric load that precedes it; and the scenes where Matt Lauer and Jon Stewart both interview the Beaver on network television are downright ludicrous.  But even when satire threatens to de-rail the most sobering intentions, the marvel of Mel Gibson's conviction lifts The Beaver back on the right track. Tightly controlled and uniquely troubled, Walter Black is a difficult role. With eyes like watery wounds, maybe Mr. Gibson is not even acting. The hand puppet becomes his alter ego, a theatrical device to separate him from the negative aspects of his personality, and although it's odd and sometimes exasperating, he plays every transitional mood swing with grace and a kind of madness that becomes magnetic. Ms. Foster is a perfect soulmate. She even gets used to sharing her bed with the Beaver, but her patience wears out when, after 20 years of marriage, Walter insists on attending their intimate anniversary dinner with the puppet dressed in a miniature tuxedo.

Who can say what works when it comes to dealing with mental illness. To anyone who has ever experienced the pain of fighting off clinical depression, it seems like a perfectly logical modus operandi--until the Beaver assumes too much power and turns into a control freak. The only way to get rid of him is to lose part of yourself. Whatever you think of Mr. Gibson, whatever he has lost, he still has talent, and here displays acting of power and resonance. It's a pleasure, for a change, to see the best side of his split personality at work.

rreed@observer.com

The Beaver

Running time 91 minutes

Written by Kyle Killen

Directed by Jodie Foster

Starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin

3/4

--How did Tina Fey acquit herself as a tertiary character in a fake Bravo reality show?

--...and how does Mel Gibson do in Jodie Foster's new dip into directing?

--Speaking of which! How did the husky-voiced directress--scandalously!--finagle her way onto the cover of The Hollywood Reporter?

--But surely THR has no greater problems at the moment?

--What's the "coke of the art world"? (It isn't coke? It isn't coke!)

--What player lured Lindsay Lohan to the Knicks game last night (away from hangouts in "the art world"--she heard their priorities had shifted!)?

--No Lohan he, which Vogue reporter "wasn’t exactly sure what a Knick was"?

--Extra credit: What is a Knick?

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

(A stretch, we say, given Downey, Jr.'s current leading-man appeal, though the two have had similar substance abuse issues -- a shoplifting-era Winona, the GQ piece notes, was found with this laundy list: "a syringe, bottles of Demerol and diazepam, six Valiums, forty Vicoprofens, two Vicodins, two Percocets, a Percodan, and a morphine-sulfate capsule.")

But the juiciest part of the piece comes when Winona dishes celebrity dirt. GQ doesn't include all of it, but this anecdote makes the cut, presumably for the sake of the common good.

"I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk. I was with my friend, who's gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about 'oven dodgers,' but I didn't get it. I'd never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, 'He's anti-Semitic and he's homophobic.' No one believed me!"

Look at all the time and effort we could have saved if we had just listened to Winona. Sigh.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Check Out The 10 Cultural Highlights of the Year.>>

The book recently received some attention for its conceit ("Celebrity Chekhov?!" wrote Huffpost, linking to a story in the Daily News), which is to replace the characters in Chekhov stories with modern stars like Alec Baldwin, Billy Ray Cyrus and Nicole Kidman. An excerpt is available here. The Observer recently had a phone interview with the writer and New Yorker editor just before he headed to Los Angeles to promote the book.

The Observer: We were already familiar with your work on celebrity musicals, but why drag Chekhov into all this?
BG: Well I've never met the man. But it's been ten years now of doing what I guess people call serious fiction. I've done mainly short stories, and it has a lot to do with having a day job, that's the size work that makes the most sense to me, so I'm constantly reading and rereading his among others. And I felt like they were constantly getting kind of stuck in that 19th century world. So rather than dragging him into it, I actually see it as more of pulling things into his work. There were certain stories that, when I read them, they seemed to me like they were the stories of celebrities that I knew. There's A Lady's Story that I gave to Brittany Spears remembering this early sort of ideal love that she had with Justin Timberlake, before age and gravity set in. I've known that story for years and in my mind they were sort of similar.

And one of the things you keep the same in the stories, to great comedic effect, is the dialogue.
I rewrote some, but wherever possible I used the dialogue that he had. So there are cases where it's very stage-y and formal. I think the way he uses it is to show people's internal states in very quick snapshots. It's often what people don't say, they'll leave off in the middle of a sentence. And then a couple of paragraphs later this torrent of confession will pour out of them. It's a nice mix. You really get to see the insides of people, which I think is the job of fiction. Celebrities now are absolutely media-trained to never say anything wrong, to the degree that when they do it becomes a national story.

There's this thing in journalism where you find the celebrity angle of a story and then blow that out so people will read it. Is this book, to any extent, a commentary on that?
I think that will happen. The way I see it, there will be people who say that it's opportunistic, that it's piggybacking on these celebrities. There will certainly be people who will say it's a travesty because I've taken these stories that are so comfortable in their original context and disemboweled them. To me I think it's a little different. I think it's an experiment. I hesitate to call it serious fiction, because it sounds ridiculous, let's say I think of it as literary fiction, and then humor pieces that are about pop culture.

I think it's a big set of questions. Why are we drawn to celebrities? Why when you see the name "Lady Gaga," even if you don't care about her, it's sort of like Pavlovian training, your eye just goes to that? People say I'm making fun of celebrities, which might be true, but the question isn't why are celebrities doing what they do, because in a lot of cases it's very obvious. They like acting, they like money, they like attention, they're attractive people, they're talented. So it's not so hard to imagine why Justin Timberlake is acting and going on talk shows: because he's good at it. To me the more interesting question is why for the rest of us you can just put that little name in there, all you do is take out a Russian name that you didn't understand anyway and everything changes. What's interesting is the strength and the magnet of, say, Oprah's name. You put Oprah's name into something and that suddenly bends everything around it; it has this forcefield. It's not Oprah's fault.

You ghostwrote biographies for Gene Simmons and Simon Cowell. How did that play into your interest in celebrity?
On some level these stories are kind of serious. It's hard to say that because I don't want to come off as self-important. They're an attempt to kind of reauthorize these people, celebrities, as three-dimensional people, and that may come a little bit from the ghostwriting. Because you see so much of these people, when you're working with them, that doesn't even make it into their own memoirs. You get to see the days that they're in good humor and they're really funny and kind and the days when they're worried. You get a more complete picture of them. That's what literature's supposed to do for its characters. So it's partially an attempt to re-inflate these people who at times have become cartoon characters. In those two cases, Gene Simmons has a very different way of dealing with it than Simon Cowell. Simon made a career out of being himself, as far as we know, obviously there's some distance. He was not concealed. Gene made a career out of being in costume for the most part.

We heard that there's an extra chapter to this book if you buy it on the iPad?
One of the things we found as we closed off this book is, obliviously, celebrity can be either be fleeting or slightly less fleeting. Certain celebrities that were on everybody's lips nine months ago have sort of passed. So we're looking for extra stories because a lot of publishers now want some incentive to encourage people to purchase the ebook. In the case of nonfiction books sometimes they'll add content like an interview with the author or primary documents but for fiction it's hard to imagine what you add. You've edited a novel, it's perfect, what do you do? You don't put in this part you took out because that seems stupid.

For this book we received a perfectly wrapped and beribboned gift from heaven: Mel Gibson came back into our lives. The timing couldn't have been better and the man couldn't have been angrier. At that time there was this one story that I loved and it didn't make the cut because I couldn't think of a celebrity to put in there. It's a story about a man and his wife, they're coming from home from dinner around Easter time and they run into this poor thin man, this beggar on the street, and how they treat him and the tension between them becomes the center of the story. And when Mel blew up at Oksana it was like a giant stinking flower blooming right in my garden. It was perfect. It fit him, I would say, like a crazily clenched glove. It's almost as if I went back and time and paid Mel to scream at her that he would like to burn her house down after she orally serviced him. It's like he's working for me, that's my feeling.

And the weird thing is, I did a musical for him and there are some celebrities that I thought would never die. Mel I think is one of them. There's just something about the man, whether it's his need for attention or that weird mix of talent and, from everything you hear about him, true kindness and generosity and also an anger problem. The other one who didn't make it into the book because he's an icon in a different way was OJ [Simpson]. OJ surfaced in the musicals a million times, but he's OJ, you know? There's no story about a Russian gentleman who takes somebody who's returning his little nose-pinch-y glasses and chops off their head. I couldn't find one of those.

Celebrity Chekhov by Ben Greenman, available in print or e-book format.

Yaverbaum, a 49-year-old marketing exec who maintains offices in Manhattan and White Plains, founded Offlining Inc. with his frequent partner, Mark DiMassimo. The organization encourages people to put away their electronics and reconnect with family and nature. Since both men are marketers, they did what came naturally and created an ad campaign. "You don't have to be Jewish..." skewers various celebrities and their digital digressions.

Along with Mel Gibson, the campaign highlighted Lindsey Lohan and Tiger Woods. So far over 100,000 people have emailed these ads to friends and family, while 10,000 more have signed the Offlining pledge to have ten dinners without any electronic devices by Thanksgiving, 2010.

It's hard to tell how seriously Yaverbaum and DiMassimo are taking all this. “Eric and I have spent most of the past two decades convincing people to click, log on, trade stocks in their underwear, go shopping online, and spend more time with their digital friends," says DiMassimo. "We’re still doing that. But now we’re also going to be selling the off button!”

Last year the duo grabbed headlines for their Tappening campaign, which encouraged people to drink tap water and attacked the bottled water companies. The Tappening website features a poll that lets users vote on whether Yaverbaum and DiMassimo are greedy entreprenuers, selfless environmentalists, or both. It's a nice way of acknowledging the self-serving nature of the duo's various campaigns. Roughly half a million votes later, the answer is definitively both.

I have two reactions to the latest Mel-gate. The first is that I couldn't give a hoot about Mr. Gibson, a mega-celebrity who has clearly lost control of his life. The second is: There but for the grace of God go we.

I don't mean that we all harbor barely suppressed racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny. I'm not saying that we are all one step away from exploding into an obscene, drunken tantrum. I mean that we are all-those of us who are not saints, anyway-fallible beings capable of irrational behavior, ugly sentiments and rhetorical rage.

I agree with the notion that the ugly private acts of public figures like Mr. Gibson are fair game. If the public giveth fame and unimaginable wealth, and it is accepted, then the public should have the right to take it away in the light of an extraordinary meltdown of character. Call it the force majeure clause in popular culture. But like our legal system, our structure of customs and conventions also proceeds by precedent. There is general exultation that Mr. Gibson's former lover, Oksana Grigorieva, taped her telephone conversation with him, thus catching him in the act of viciously attacking her and hurling racial and ethnic slurs. (How old-fashioned to use the telephone to expose someone, rather than some digital technology.) But there is no awareness that the same tactics could one day soon be used against all sorts of public figures, virtuous or not, and even against people who have no public presence whatsoever. Aren't Facebook pages being scoured for private indiscretions, even as I write this, by prospective employers, embittered ex-spouses and just plain malevolent individuals?

And when you or I are caught with our pants down or our tongues embarrassingly flapping, our expectation that people will see the complicated shadings of our misconduct might be disappointed. The most sophisticated people have turned a blind eye to the possibility that Ms. Grigorieva might well be the ruthless gold digger Mr. Gibson has accused her of being. Can't he be the indecent man he has proven himself to be, and also be right about his perception of his former paramour? Just as you can applaud the downfall of the equally tongue-tripping Stanley McChrystal, despise him as a homicidal frat boy, yet believe him when he says that he found Barack Obama "unprepared" and understand, if not pardon, the source of his disdain for a president so easily intimidated by a general?

As for Mr. Gibson, that gnarled, dark, snarling voice on the tapes is the voice of a man who has been delivered a blow to, as D.H. Lawrence once put it, his "sexual root." After all, Mr. Gibson doesn't have the typical profile of a Hollywood celeb. He was married for 30 years to the same woman-a former dental assistant-with whom he had seven children. Apparently, he likes children so much that he and his now ex-wife have donated millions of dollars to organizations devoted to helping sick ones. After 30 years, something in him snaps and he runs off with a woman who allows him to donate millions of dollars to her mediocre career as a performer. Filled with self-loathing at being made a fool, he turns his self-hatred against her. His childish, inadequate view of the world-his religious inflexibility, fueled by alcohol and a self-aggrandizing "romanticism"-breaks under the strain of his contradictions and he erupts. The kikes and the niggers and the fags and the wetbacks are the patchwork monster of his very own self, formerly hidden by a puerile Catholicism, and by an adolescent notion of himself as a hero-Braveheart-and by his own occasional charitableness. Maybe he is so fond of children because, like so many Hollywood actors who grew rich and famous before they could grow a character, he never had a reckoning with his responsibilities to people outside his familiar world.

You can buy my psychologizing or not, but I think that if we don't practice understanding in the public realm, we will start to lose it in the private realm. Alas, there are plenty of people willing to hasten the prosecutorial atmosphere to advance their own interests. Consider The Times' David Brooks and Frank Rich. Like some old vaudeville duo, both of them instantly seized on Mr. Gibson's latest meltdown to preen themselves on their own moral virtue, and to draw the most foolish conclusions from it about American life.

According to Mr. Brooks, Mr. Gibson's private rant means that "we've entered an era where self-branding is on the ascent and the culture of self-effacement is on the decline." Never mind that with his global celebrity and his hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. Gibson is as much unlike "us" as Mr. Brooks is unlike Homer, to whom he repeatedly and inaccurately refers in his columns. (Anger in The Iliad is not perceived as "a source of pleasure," as he wrote in his Gibson column. Rather, it destroys families and societies.) And never mind that barely three weeks ago, Mr. Brooks himself deplored the culture of exposure, using the McChrystal meltdown to mount his social-science pulpit and loudly lament "the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities."

And here is the ever-sanctimonious Frank Rich reaching his big-picture conclusion: "The death throes of Mel Gibson's career feel less like another Hollywood scandal than the last gasps of an American era." Never mind that Mr. Gibson, who abruptly shifted from action hero to playing the infinitely complex Hamlet, does not stand for an era. And never mind that the era Mr. Rich is referring to-the era of the culture wars-is one that he keeps pronouncing dead in column after column, for the simple reason that all he knows how to write about is the culture wars. Mr. Rich goes on to call Mr. Gibson a "bigoted blowhard." Well, that's obvious. Mr. Gibson also opposed the Iraq war and spoke of President Bush's "fearmongering." I still think he's a creep. I can't forgive him for using the N-word, even though the Lethal Weapon movies that he made with Danny Glover probably did as much as Oprah to break down taboos between whites and blacks. Yet in their affectation of starry-eyed naïveté about human nature, Messrs. Brooks and Rich seem to be enacting their own Braveheart fantasy. Mr. Rich even boasts that Mr. Gibson once threatened to kill him. Ecce homo!

With his racial, religious and sexual slurs, Mr. Gibson has disgraced himself with an un-American outburst. Our fair land of teeming differences is too much for him. He has forfeited his right to loom on our mythical and mythologizing silver screen: He will disappear into ignominious oblivion, and he should.

Still, I wonder if in this little story we are now telling ourselves about the absolute badness of Mr. Gibson and the absolute goodness of those who condemn him, we are not acting a lot like the puerile Patriot himself.

editorial@observer.com

Audiences everywhere are ranting about Despicable Mel: the unraveling of an actor whose career as an entertainer seems like it ought to be kaput.

In the past two weeks, the Aussie-born Mel Gibson has supplemented past anti-Semitic outbursts with leaked recordings that use the N-word (in an especially off-putting reference to rape) and what sounds like a death threat to the mother of his 8-month-old daughter. "I'll put you in a f------ rose garden. You understand that?" Mr. Gibson is purportedly recorded telling ex-girlfriend Oskana Grigorieva, "because I'm capable of it." 

After the first recording was leaked to RadarOnline, the actor was fired by the talent agency William Morris Endeavor. 

Setting aside how reprehensible Mr. Gibson sounds-even with the caveats that he has battled alcoholism and by some reports was caught unawares by mini-microphones hidden in diamond earnings-his antics have set off a fascinating discussion in Hollywood about how awful you have to behave in this town for your career to be really, truly over. Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times brilliantly terms it a great example of Hollywood's "situational ethics," and Kim Masters in The Hollywood Reporter notes that other stars, like Charlie Sheen, have been forgiven for their transgressions. Mr. Gibson has a couple of films in production, but his latest work, the thriller The Edge of Darkness, came and went quietly. The town actually respects some public self-destruction (à la Robert Downey Jr. or Anne Heche). Actor Danny Glover-Mr. Gibson's co-star in all those Lethal Weapon flicks-has had no comment, but longtime friend Whoopi Goldberg defended him-sort of. "You can say he's being a bonehead, but I can't sit and say that he's a racist having spent time with him in my house with my kids," she told The View. "I don't like what he's done, make no mistake."

It must be noted that just before his firing from William Morris, Mr. Gibson's longtime agent there had passed away. Powerful agent Ari Emanuel had called for a boycott of Mr. Gibson's work back in 2006 when reports of his making anti-Semitic slurs were first made public. And Mr. Emanuel ended up in charge of William Morris after merging his Endeavor firm with William Morris last year, but for whatever reason he held his powder on Mr. Gibson until the tape of him using the N-word emerged. Mr. Emanuel was either biding his time or giving him a second chance, but now Mr. Gibson is toxic and no other talent agency is going to touch him. 

It's worth remembering that Mr. Gibson's The Passion of the Christ generated plenty of controversy and stands as the highest-grossing independently financed film ever. And his directorial follow-up, Apocalypto, was released by Disney several months after Mr. Gibson had to apologize for the anti-Semitic and sexist slurs he made to police officers who pulled him over for a suspected DUI in Malibu. It's cynical to say, but the inescapable reality is that as long as someone is bankable, they are tolerable and even possibly redeemable (a lesson that Lindsay Lohan ought to ponder right about now). While the current view is that Mr. Gibson is done as far as acting in other people's films, he could still use his chops as a director through his Icon Productions.

It's a funny business, though, and a lot can happen over time. While the L.A. Police Department was reportedly opening an investigation into Mr. Gibson for domestic violence, Swiss authorities were denying the extradition of accused underage sex offender and fugitive Roman Polanski. Even Mr. Polanski's 13-year-old victim, now all grown up, has forgiven him, and his latest film, The Ghost Writer, was well received.

Other celebs have survived sex tapes and leaked recordings of mean and bullying behavior, but Despicable Mel is in a category of his own. What happens next is up to him. For starters, a little public contrition should not be hard to muster. After all, the guy does know how to act. 

rsiklos@observer.com 

1. Dear John: $32.4 million ($32.4 million total)

The Super Bowl wasn't the only place to find an upset over the weekend. Chalk up the surprise success of Dear John to counterprogramming and the power of Twilight fans. While the boys were busy preparing for the big game (and not buying tickets for the red meat action provided by From Paris With Love), the girls rushed to theaters to see Channing Tatum romance Amanda Seyfried and shed some tears; a ridiculous 84 percent of Dear John's audience was female and 64 percent were under 21. Those percentages allowed the Nicholas Sparks adaptation posting the biggest Super Bowl weekend ever, topping the $31.1 million Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds grossed in 2008. Of course if all those girls knew they could get the same pang in their heart from the adorable Google commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, we have a feeling the results might have been a tad different.

2. Avatar: $23.6 million ($630 million total)

And so the reign of Avatar as the number one move in America has ended. Before you shed a tear though, remember that over the last eight weeks Avatar shattered the all-time domestic and international grosses held by Titanic and scored nine Oscar nominations. Heck, it even broke another record this weekend. Despite not finishing first, Avatar still scored the biggest eighth weekend ever, besting—you guessed it—Titanic. And in case you were wondering: it was Lost in Space that ended the historic 15-week run of Titanic back in April of 1999.

3. From Paris With Love: $8.1 million ($8.1 million total)

Disaster said what? Not only did From Paris With Love give John Travolta his worst opening since Lucky Numbers in 2000 (we don't remember it either), but it also grossed less than Battlefield Earth. Altogether now: bombs away!

4. Edge of Darkness: $7 million ($29 million total)

And speaking of bombs... those holding out hope that the word of mouth for Edge of Darkness would salvage its soft start can stop now. Down 59 percent, the Mel Gibson revenge flick was certainly not the image rehabilitating hit the former star needed. Also not image rehabilitating? Mr. Gibson calling a reporter an "asshole."

5. The Tooth Fairy: $6.5 million ($34.3 million total)

So this is happening, huh? For the second straight week, The Tooth Fairy showed remarkably solid legs and now looks poised to be a money maker for 20th Century Fox. Down an Avatar-like 35 percent, the Dwayne Johnson kiddie flick proved unquestionably that kids will indeed watch anything.

1. Avatar: $30.1 million ($594.4 million total)

It's not just that Avatar keeps dominating all other comers at the multiplex—keep in mind that 45 days into its release, Avatar almost doubled the opening of Mel Gibson's Edge of Darkness—it's that the film simply isn't losing any of its audience. In weekend seven Avatar dipped only 14 percent and had a per theater average of almost $10,000. In weekend seven! Of course, the only other time we've ever seen anything like this is Titanic, and that Avatar is less than $7 million away from passing that film for the all-time domestic crown shouldn't be surprising. James Cameron will likely unseat himself as King of America sometime on Tuesday (Avatar already passed Titanic globally, so the King of the World moniker still holds). The only bad news: After losing the DGA Award over the weekend to ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, the chances of Mr. Cameron getting another Oscar appear to be dwindling by the day. We guess he'll just cry himself to sleep on a giant bed covered in money.

2. Edge of Darkness: $17.1 million ($17.1 million total)

File the disappointing opening for Edge of Darkness under: People don't forget. The last time Mel Gibson headlined a movie it was Signs in 2002, and that film opened with $60.1 million on the way to $227.9 million total. Eight years and a host of problems (adultery, anti-Semitism) have certainly dulled his star, and the opening of Edge of Darkness reflects that. Keep in mind that nearly a year ago to the weekend, the similarly themed Taken opened with $24.1 million. That Mr. Gibson couldn't top that number is discouraging. That he couldn't even top the opening of Legion, which grossed $17.5 million last weekend, is downright ugly.

3. When in Rome: $12 million ($12 million total)

At least When in Rome had a bigger opening than Leap Year? Shrug. The chances are good that you don't know one person who will admit to seeing When in Rome this weekend, but as the saying goes: people love their crappy romantic comedies. Keep that in mind when Valentine's Day unseats Avatar as the number one movie in America two weeks from now.

4. The Tooth Fairy: $10 million ($26.1 million total)

Which movie had the lowest depreciation in the top 10, non-Avatar division? Try The Tooth Fairy. The most surprising result of the weekend is that the Dwayne Johnson kiddie flick held up remarkably well, dropping just 29 percent and holding fourth place for the second straight week. While the expectations for this film probably haven't been met, we doubt 20th Century Fox will mind that much. With $26.1 million already and what looks to be solid legs, The Tooth Fairy will make back its reported $48 million budget before it closes up shop.

5. The Book of Eli: $8.7 million ($74.3 million total)

The word to keep in mind for The Book of Eli is solid. How else to describe the post-apocalyptic film, which dipped just 44 percent in weekend three and now seems likely to gross at least $90 million? The results for Eli, and even Legion (down an alarming 61 percent, Legion landed in sixth place and has grossed $28.6 million overall), show there is a market for movies about the end of the world. And that makes us wonder: What would The Road have grossed had the Weinstein Company actually had enough money to market and release it into more than a handful of theaters? We have no problem calling The Road a casualty of the Great Recession.