Forgiveness & Hollywood revisited

I'm glad I'm not Mel Gibson. If you were to write his bio right now, you might call it The Crucifixion. You could sell it as a special boxed set with his movie The Passion of the Christ. In fact, a friend of mine even said that Mel is getting raked over the coals because he made that movie.

I just find it interesting how fickle our society is. Two years ago, Barbara Walters couldn't say enough good things about Mel. Now that Mel made some inappropriate comments due to the high levels of alcohol in his system, she wants nothing to do with him. The rest of Hollywood has followed suit. The average guy and gal on the street stands up and cheers, saying, "Down with Mel."

I'm not trying to justify what Mel said or did. Nor is he a close personal friend of mine whom I'm sticking up for. But come on people! How many of us have not said something totally stupid that we knew after the fact was going to cause a lot of ripples? Some have argued that a person in his position and influence should be more careful. True. But Mel Gibson is an actor, not a world leader. Incidentally, where were all these people when Jesse Ventura made his bone-headed statement about people of faith being stupid? He was a governor at the time and he was sober.

I'm starting to rant now, so let me reel myself in and get to the point. At some point, after many stated apologies by both Mel and his spokespeople, the world will forgive him. They'll forget it ever happened until the next time he even thinks about saying something derogatory about anything. Will this be real forgiveness? Or will it be some cheap version that only ensures the cash flow of those involved? Do we even know what real forgiveness is? Just a thought.