FRANK RICH has a new essay on Mel Gibson in the New York Times (via Open Book). No response on his dowdification of Mel which I pointed out last month, and about which I also e-mailed him. I'm going to have to dig up this New Yorker article; it sounds pretty interesting.

UPDATE: The New Yorker interview is excerpted and summarized here. (It seems to be the New Yorker's own summary.) If the whole article is available anywhere online, I can't find it. Interestingly, it sounds as if Gibson's much quoted wish to kill Frank Rich and his (nonexistent) dog was supposedly overheard by Gibson's marketing director. If that's true, it's not an entirely irrelevant point and none of the articles I've seen that repeated the quote put it in that context. We all say outrageous things to ourselves which we don't really mean when we think no one is listening - not least when we think someone is insulting a family member. It's a pretty horrible thing to say, but if he said it to himself and was overheard, it's not the same as saying it to an interviewer. If anyone has seen the whole article and thinks my reading is incorrect, please e-mail me and let me know.

UPDATE: On the basis of the New Yorker article, Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, says that Gibson holds anti-Semitic views.

UPDATE: Nope, I was wrong. Gibson made the comment about killing Frank Rich to the interviewer. The marketing director overheard it and tried to put a damage-control spin on it. I've tried to be sympathetic to Gibson, especially since he does seem to get a lot of hassle from the media - some of it unfair. But in this case he lost it; there's no excuse for what he said and it makes him and his whole project look bad.

A reader has alerted me to a complete copy of the New Yorker article (whose title is "The Jesus War") online at a site called FreeRepublic.com. I'm not entirely sure where this stands vis � vis copyright law: a fair use defense could be made for it, since it's followed by extensive commentary and discussion (for which, by the way, I take no responsibility). But I'm a little uncomfortable about linking to a whole long article that's been extracted from its source, so I'll leave it to you go to the site and do a search for it yourself if you want to.