Like Father, Like Son?

July 31, 2006 — -- Are a drunk man's words a sober man's thoughts, as the old proverb teaches? A police report filed over the weekend about an alcohol-fueled anti-Semitic tirade by actor Mel Gibson has renewed interest not only in the opinions of the famous filmmaker but also in those of his father.

A Los Angeles Sheriff's Department report states that when Gibson was arrested early Friday morning for speeding with a .12 blood alcohol level, the 50-year-old actor lashed out at "f--ing Jews" and said that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson had asked a sheriff's deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

After the story broke on Saturday, Gibson issued a statement apologizing for his behavior and for having "said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable," but none of those sentiments seem all that detached from the views of the actor's father.

Hutton Gibson, 87, is a leading proponent of what is called Catholic traditionalism, a canon that rejects the changes to Catholicism made during the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, which the elder Gibson once called ''a Masonic plot backed by the Jews.''

Hutton Gibson is also outspoken in his views that the Holocaust never happened, or at least not to the degree that historians maintain. "Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," he told the New York Times in 2003. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, 6 million?"

Hutton Gibson has appeared at events sponsored by the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying Barnes Review (Click HERE to see a program from a 2003 seminar, which includes a photograph of Gibson with notorious Holocaust-denier Fredrick Töben) and is heralded on anti-Semitic Web sites around the world.

In one radio interview in 2004, Hutton Gibson said that "most of " what historians say about the Holocaust is "fiction." He claimed that 6 million Jews weren't killed during World War II. Rather, he said, they moved.