Bigoted Gibson Admirers Sound Off

My mail is all Mel Gibson all the time, with readers chastising, cheering and cursing me for my Monday column about his arrest on suspicion of drunk driving in Malibu.

On Wednesday I shifted gears and wrote about my sit-down with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Conan was no match for Braveheart. The mail is still about Gibson.

I’ve been blasted for my alleged insensitivity to Christians, but I can’t bring myself to apologize for pointing out the divide between Gibson’s public piety and his unholy behavior.

I also got knocked around for not being more politically correct on the subject of alcoholism. To that, I say yes, I’m well aware that alcoholism is a deadly disease that can make you say things you wouldn’t say while sober. But I don’t believe it can make you suddenly think things that never entered your mind.

And speaking of bigots, I’ve read far too many e-mails from readers supporting Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks, which included his accusation that “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

A sampling:

“You’re no better than the Jews he blamed of starting the wars.”

“You kiss ass to bigoted Jews.”

“You work for The Almighty Israel Lobby who owns your poor little dishonest soul.”

“It was my Jewish fiance who broke my ribs and triggered my reoccurrence of cancer.”

“Who cares about his comments on Jews!”

“I really don’t think his opinion of Jews is completely wrong ... shame on you Steve.”

So “what if he doesn’t like Jews.... The man is showing some humanity.”

“We all know the Jewish people were looking for an excuse to find a weakness in Mr. Mel Gibson and they found it.”

Great to see so much goodwill out there.

At least Gibson had the decency to apologize for remarks he called “despicable,” and he apparently wants to meet with Jewish community leaders and make amends. Maybe he should round up all his apologists and take them along with him.

But having said all that, it’s possible that I may owe Gibson an apology. While looking into the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s handling of the matter, I heard there was some dispute about one of the saltier comments attributed to Gibson during his drunken tirade.

I’ve since been unable to prove that Gibson either said or did not say to a female sergeant, “What do you think you’re looking at, sugar tits?” as I reported in my Monday column.

The reporter who broke the story and ran that quote on the TMZ.com website is standing by his story and his source.

Still, if I had realized the quote was not part of an official sheriff’s report and had not been independently confirmed by The Times, as I believed it had been, I wouldn’t have used it.

My apologies to Gibson. It’s still possible he made the sugar comment at some point, but there’s no official record of it. Unfortunately for him, what he did say is worse.

A high-level Sheriff’s Department source tells me two insulting comments were made at the station by Gibson, and when I heard what they were, they made the sugar reference seem tame by comparison. Luckily for Gibson, neither is publishable.

Given how drunk he must have been to utter what he did, Gibson is lucky he didn’t kill himself or someone else. And let’s hope he’s off the sauce for good this time.

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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com.