By Andrew L. Jaffee

After Mel Gibson’s drunken tirade on Friday, in which he shouted, “‘fucking Jews’; accused Jews of being responsible for all the wars in the world; and asked the arresting officer, James Mee, whether he was himself Jewish,” the soon-to-be ex-actor is being contrite. But Gibson’s contrition is nothing short than fake, and is really an attempt to salvage his career.

Here’s the apology from Fox:

Mel Gibson has admitted to making anti-Semitic remarks during his drunken driving arrest and has asked members of the Jewish community to help him recover from his alcohol addiction.

In a statement issued Tuesday through his publicist, the actor-director says, “I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge.”

What a complete joke. My experience is that alcohol brings out a person’s true sentiments. Gibson is really afraid of losing money. From Wizbang Pop!:

Walt Disney Co.’s ABC Television Network pulled the plug on a miniseries about the Holocaust that it was developing with Mel Gibson’s production company, after the actor allegedly made anti-Semitic remarks when he was arrested last week on suspicion of drunken driving.

Mr. Gibson was arrested Thursday night in Malibu, Calif. His conduct prompted criticism from Jewish groups and Hollywood executives, with one prominent agent calling for a boycott of the actor and director.

The incident raised questions about the future of projects Mr. Gibson and his Icon Productions company are working on, most notably a television miniseries based on a memoir about a Dutch Jew during World War II.

Perhaps the Belfast Telegraph summarizes Gibson’s “Passion:”

In Hollywood, there are the screw-ups, and then there are the career-ending screw-ups. In a town that mirrors, and often, exaggerates and glamorises the moral lapses of society at large, people - or at least the people in charge - don’t generally have too much of a problem with flamingly public marital bust-ups, or drunken binges, or drug habits, or weird attachments to religious sects, or wanton destruction of property, or even the habit of certain exalted actors and directors of hitting on every semi-attractive member of the opposite sex who crosses their path.

Some things, though, are absolute no-nos. Paedophilia crosses the line. So, too, do rape, incest and murder. (Fatty Arbuckle crossed two of those three lines in the 1920s, and Hollywood has never forgotten it.)

They are no-nos not because Hollywood has some baseline moral scruples - publicists are forever looking for ways to turn bad news into the next promotional opportunity - but, principally, because they are bad for the box office. The infraction doesn’t have to involve criminal behaviour at all, in fact, for the money men to start worrying. The key consideration is whether it risks deterring audiences from showing up at the multiplex.