Cue the slow clapping

Mel Gibson is pleased to announce to Diane Sawyer — whose show is never, ever, ever used for shameless publicity — that he’s been sober for 65 days.

Clean shaven and casually dressed in jeans and a blue checkered shirt, Gibson tells Sawyer he began drinking two months before sheriff’s deputies arrested him in Malibu on July 28.

“Years go by, you’re fine,” he says. “And then all of a sudden in a heartbeat, in an instant, on an impulse, somebody shoves a glass of Mescal in front of your nose and says, ‘It’s from Oaxaca.’ And it’s burning its way through your esophagus and you go, ‘Oh man, what did I do that for? I can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.”‘

The interview with Sawyer is the first time Gibson has spoken to the media since sparking a scandal by unleashing what he later called “vitriolic and harmful words” during his arrest. Gibson told the arresting officer: “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” and asked him, “Are you a Jew?”

“The last thing I want to be is that kind of monster,” he tells Sawyer in the interview.

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that if your excuse for drinking is that “somebody shoves a glass of mescal in front of your nose”, you may have a bit of a persecution complex. And I’d say that it looks a wee bit like the kind of persecution complex that might besiege, oh, say, a staunch Catholic who believes that Jews are responsible for all wars. The Crusades, as you’ll recall, were a particularly nasty little Jewish war. Catholics would never go there.

I’m sure Sawyer didn’t call him on his mean-spirited, whiny twaddle, but everyone else should. Mel may be dry, but he’s clearly still a drunk. You can tell he’s aching for the Oaxacan fire water to burn through his twisted system once again. It’s like listening to Jim Bakker talk about the scourge of pornography and aberrant sexuality. It’s all in the nuance. The Devil’s in the details.

I’m glad you’re sober, Mel, at least for now. But it wasn’t the booze talking that fateful evening. It was you. Take a little responsibility, buddy! Be a Braveheart, not a Whinycock.

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