The American Spectator

I have a feeling the kind of people who tend to ignore and excuse the anti-Semitic screeds coming out of Hezbollah will also be the kind of people who regard every awful word Mel Gibson said while plastered as a true expression of what he really, secretly believes.

There is an overly large group of people out there willing to look for nuance in the fanatically eliminationist rhetoric of Iran’s President. His statements are never made under the influence of alcohol, and yet his stone-cold sober rantings about the destruction of Israel and his hints about nuclear weapons are parsed away and ascribed to the particular nuances of his culture. But Mel Gibson? Let’s all pretend we know exactly what he thinks when he’s sober, based on the balderdash he roars with a bottle of Tequila under his belt.

It bothers me when smart people who know better believe that canard. After all, do our courts allow witnesses to offer their solemn testimony while plowed? If one tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth when snockered, then perhaps our courts ought to require witnesses to demonstrate a sufficiently elevated BAC to testify.

p>Alcohol is not a truth serum, of course; it just makes you stupid (or more stupid) when taken to excess. There is no empirical evidence that drunks are any more truthful than sober people. It’s an old wives’ tale that alcohol opens a window on one’s soul. Alas, it’s a tale some people would just love to believe. ADL National Director Abe Foxman said : br> /p>

It is unfortunate that it took an excess of booze and an encounter with a traffic cop to reveal what was really in his heart and mind.

We would hope that Hollywood now would realize the bigot in their midst and that they will distance themselves from this anti-Semite.

br> Maybe Mel Gibson is a closet Jew-hater, and maybe he isn’t. But pretending to learn a person’s true character based on what he says while drunk and handcuffed in the backseat of a police car is absurd. Still, among those smart people ready to judge Gibson a closet Nazi is Christopher Hitchens: br>

One does not abruptly decide, between the first and second vodka, or the ticks of the indicator of velocity, that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are valid after all.

br> That is not my experience. During my last year in law school, I was an intern prosecutor in Oklahoma . I dealt with hundreds of DUI cases that year and tried a few. I read police reports about all sorts of stops and found the behavior of the defendants varied widely. The specific effects of drunkenness, beyond the most clinical physiological ones, are just not predictable.

Some people get sleepy, some people get witty and funny and loud, and some people get mean and even violent and take a swing at a friend or a cop. Alcohol is a depressant that removes inhibitions, and it makes people do things that they wouldn’t ever consider doing when sober. Drunk people will attack friends or family members whom they love. The “Girls Gone Wild” video series is testament to the power of booze to prompt behavior in young women that they might otherwise be ashamed of. And the phenomenon of “beer goggles,” in which unattractive women appear more and more attractive the more one drinks, has led many a man to do things he wished he hadn’t.

Alcohol can even affect someone’s judgment to the point that getting behind the wheel of a car while soused seems like a perfectly reasonable idea. And while no one I know has ever conjured up a Jew-baiting reverie like Mr. Gibson’s after a few drinks, we all know people who have said something indiscreet, offensive, or hurtful that they really, honest-to-God wish they had left unsaid because they truly do not believe it.