The usually common-sense Joseph Farah has seemingly lost the plot, judging by this defense of Mel Gibson.
Farah argues that Gibson’s statement regarding columnist Frank Rich (“I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.”) was perfectly understandable, since Rich insulted his father, an insult that Farah labels as “an unwarranted, unjustified smear.”
And what is this alleged smear? Rich wrote:
The fact of the matter is that no-one, including Gibson and his father, has denied that Gibson senior said these things. Well, Gibson junior says that his father never actually denied the holocaust – he just minimalized it:Mel Gibson’s father and a prominent traditionalist Catholic author, was quoted as saying that the Vatican Council was “a Masonic plot backed by the Jews” and that the Holocaust was a charade. But in fact, neither Hutton nor Mel Gibson – nor anyone else – has contacted the magazine to challenge the accuracy of a single sentence in the article in the four months since its publication.
Farah then launches into a vicious tirade against Rich, calling him a “coward with an agenda”. May I suggest that perhaps Farah is the one with an agenda. He seems to bend over backwards to support anyone who shares his strong, Christian values, and his website, WorldNetDaily, has an overtly Christian agenda, as I previously pointed out after a story on Dr Laura. And before anyone misunderstands me, I am certainly not anti-Christian, but rather the opposite. As I have said in the past, I do not believe that a news service that claims to be a “free press for a free people” should have a religious agenda of any kind.“He never denied the Holocaust. He just said there were fewer than 6 million.”
Farah then explains Gibson’s fighting words as follows:
Oh p-u-lease! You have to be kidding! Frank Rich reports the truth about Gibson’s father and Farah attacks him; when Gibson threatens Rich, it is just him acting like Braveheart?I was struck at how those inflammatory words sounded just like they might have been exhorted by William Wallace in “Braveheart.” It was almost as if Gibson was playing one of his over-the-top characters.
Joseph Farah would be best advised to stick to the facts, and not to his religious beliefs, if he wants to retain credibility as a reliable journalist.