I carpool once a week with a guy who listens to talk radio, and I fully expected to hear him rush to Gibson's defense, claim political correctness gone beserk, blah blah, but when the apology was being replayed and analyzed by the commentator--can't really remember who, they all kind of morph together for me--his only reaction was, "well, that wasn't even funny."
Not much sympathy for Gibson even from his own kindred spirits, and this is the opinion of a guy whose head spins around every time he hears the words "Hillary" and "Clinton." I'm not up on who's who in the world of talk radio but Gibson just strikes me as a third-rate Limbaugh wannabe.
One thing has struck me though--do you remember when Brokeback Mountain first came out, the reaction of a certain class of (usually male) media types, not necessarily Fox minions, who could not get through a single broadcast without at least one, though rarely just one, obligatory Brokeback reference? Of course, it was a cultural moment, but this went beyond that, after the film left theaters and the buzz died down, they were still keeping the flame alive, so to speak.
A friend of mine, partnered with a man but once married to a woman, said once his ex-wife suspected there was something going on between them when he came down with mention-itis, e.g., just could not restrain himself from bringing up the name of the man he fancied, all the time. That's what guys like David Letterman made me think of--it's as if they had a unique form of Tourette's that compelled them to say "Brokeback" all the time, introducing it into contexts that had nothing to do with homosexuality, movies, masculinity, et al.
Now with the sad passing of Heath Ledger all over the news, two years since Brokeback was released, Ledger having completed several films since, including I'm Not There which is still in theaters, and Batman, which is likely to be a huge summer blockbuster even if this had never happened, but what do the commentators choose to reference? Am I the only one that gets an odd sense of...something... here? Like relief at being able to scratch that itch, to be able to quote "I wish I knew how to quit you" again, without getting odd looks as if the speaker just broke into the Macarena (while saying "Show me the money!")??
And such familiarity with the dialogue, too! I don't believe that "Since we're going to be working together, we might as well start drinking together" actually made the final cut, it was only in the theatrical trailer, and yet Gibson (or one of his faithful tweenies) had it all warmed up and ready to go. Such thoroughness!
Not that there's anything, you know, wrong with any of this. I'm not implying anything, just making a little observation.