John Gibson is a sick, sick man. (Think Progress, which has audio):
Opening his radio show with funeral music yesterday, Fox News host John Gibson callously mocked the death of actor Heath Ledger, calling him a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”It’s apparently great fun to mock the 28-year-old actor’s death simply because he played gay in Brokeback Mountain, a film that made John Gibson terribly uncomfortable, as he recounted in 2006’s “Most People Don’t Want to See Two Guys Get It On“:Playing an audio clip of the iconic quote, “I wish I knew how to quit you” from Ledger’s gay romance movie Brokeback Mountain, Gibson disdainfully quipped, “Well, he found out how to quit you.” Laughing, Gibson then played another clip from Brokeback Mountain in which Ledger said, “We’re dead,” followed by his own, mocking “We’re dead” before playing the clip again.
I’m sure it will be a critical hit. Hollywood may in fact want to give every Oscar it can find to the first gay cowboy movie.But I just think most people do not want to go into a darkened room with a tub of popcorn and munch away watching two guys get it on.
I just don’t.
I had one prominent writer say he wouldn’t come on my radio show because I made hate encouraging speech when I said I couldn’t figure out which was going to be harder to watch: the guys smooching in “Brokeback” or Bob Baer getting his fingernails ripped out in “Syriana.”
I said, “Hey, I know people who are gay and I have nothing against them, but I don’t want to see this movie.”
… I still think it’s a gay agenda movie and as such it might sweep the Oscars.
You can contact FOX News (probably in vain) to tell them Gibson has gone way over the line.
More tasteful Gibson:
* John Gibson calls for white breeding ASAP
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The “Gay Agenda”, abridged version:
Step 1: Equality
Step 2: PROFIT!
Ewwww…wish I could say this came as a surprise. No, really. When you think about the sheer number of tasteless morons out there commenting on celebrities, someone was bound to say it. Doesn’t make it right, though.
There needs to be a sustained campaign to boycott all of Faux News advertisers. There is no excuse for funding literally fascist propaganda.
Also, people need to stop watching all of Fox’s networks and stop buying their newspapers. Only financial ruin will stop Rupert Murdoch’s madness.
Funny how even Mel Gibson managed to say something classy after Ledger’s death, but this guy? What a tool.
Ledger’s dead. May have been troubled, unsure of himself, unable to handle celebrity, had personal troubles, been lovesick, been an insomniac, had more aches and pains than we knew about, or whatever. But to mock him? After what may well have been an accidental death? Or even if it wasn’t? What an asshole.
I actually did find these comments surprising, even from John Gibson. I may have mistakenly thought Ledger was near universally liked, or that the tragic death of a 28 year old with a young child would be beyond the insults of Fox News. I saw the Westboro Baptist Church was getting involved, and it’s good to know that Gibson and Fox are on their level.
Stay classy, John.
“There needs to be a sustained campaign to boycott all of Faux News advertisers. There is no excuse for funding literally fascist propaganda.
Also, people need to stop watching all of Fox’s networks and stop buying their newspapers. Only financial ruin will stop Rupert Murdoch’s madness.”
The problem is that intelligent, caring, feeling, understanding people don’t watch Faux News anyway. And the advertisers (on Fox News at least) are probably perfectly aware of who they are supporting.
And Murdoch’s empire is so big, trying to hurt it is much like nutty Ken Hutcherson targeting Microsoft.
How do you get somebody with liquid cash for blood and no functioning conscience to actually pay heed to normal standards of human decency?…
“Opening his radio show with funeral music yesterday, Fox News host John Gibson callously mocked the death of actor Heath Ledger, calling him a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”
I have never watched/listened to Mr. Gibson, he was but a mere blip on my radar as I clicked through to better “news” reporters. And now I NEVER will. It would do him WELL to read Matthew 7:1-6 to be exact.
What a pathetic display of unhumanism. I am ashamed to have John Gibson in the human race.
Spreading the news of what these tools believe — and feel safe enough in their hateful hearts to tell us they believe — is a start. This fella thinks America agrees with him.
Well, golly gee, everybody thought that Rock Hudson, Randolph Scott, Cary Grant, etc. were straight because they played straight characters.
People even thought that Regan was a war-hardened veteran - heck REAGAN thought he was a war-hardened veteran because he played one in Hellcats of the Navy!
Then there is the famous “I’m not a doctor - but I play one on TV” bit from Robert what’s his name who played Marcus Wellby, MD and starred in an OTC medicine ad.
The fuck’s the matter with people?
Somehow I doubt if Ledger hadn’t starred in Brokeback Mountain, but had died after the release of the Dark Knight, Gibson would be say he died because he was a weirdo who played a mass murderer in clown make-up.
Given his long history of saying things that one would hope would disqualify him for talk show hostdom, I’d say it would be terribly surprising and bewildering if Fox picked this time to shitcan him.
After all, here was Andy Rooney in 1994: “[If Kurt Cobain] applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, its reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense either.” And that ancient fucker is still on the air.
Well, Gibson must know that dead people can’t sue for defamation.
I haven’t been following this closely, but my recollection of last night’s news was that there were no illegal drugs found in Ledger’s apartment, and no signs of suicide. The autopsy results were inconclusive as to what killled him.
Of course, the absence of any supporting evidence never stopped Gibson from drawing hateful conclusions before . . .
As we were stuck watching the near-constant CNN coverage of this Tuesday night in a hospital, waiting for a baby to be born (my partner’s nephew; it FINALLY happened at 1:45AM yesterday), the whole family pretty much agreed that if one were intentionally trying to commit suicide, one would not do so naked (Ledger was found nude). However, many people, myself included, do sleep naked. So I really think he was just desperately trying to sleep and screwed up with the sleeping pill dose/combination.
I have no words about Gibson, nothing I can think of is awful enough to adequately describe him.
A shame for his family.
And honestly, can anyone name ONE person on Fox that isn’t this sick?
I heard he was scheduled to get a massage, so being naked isn’t such a big deal. Then again, I’ve heard that many people commit suicide in the nude. I bet they don’t schedule massages beforehand, but maybe he had something against a certain massage therapist.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22813570/
Apparently Gibson has some equally sick and disturbed company…
But there were six types of prescription drugs OMG!!!!
Hell, at 28, you could easily find 6 types of prescription drugs in my house. Right now you could find 6 types of prescription drugs in my house. If I give in and go to the doctor for this god-damned-two-month-long cold or infection, I could easily put it up to more than 6 (say, add an abx, prescription cough suppressant or prescription expectorant).
people like Gibson make me regret there’s no hell. He really deserves to be ass-fucked by satan’s barbed tail for all eternity.
And honestly, can anyone name ONE person on Fox that isn’t this sick?
Alan Colmes, maybe? I don’t know what the hell his problem is.
Now I’m even more confused; I just went to Alan’s website, and shitbag Joel Osteen is on his reading list.
Yeah, mocking the dead is really uncalled for.
“He really deserves to be ass-fucked by satan’s barbed tail for all eternity.”
If there was a Hell, and Satan obliged all those who’ve earned that punishment, he would be so busy he wouldn’t have time for any of those other important satanic duties…
“Yeah, mocking the dead is really uncalled for.”
…and Falwell is directly comparable to Heath Ledger how, exactly?
Did Heath Ledger work for 40-years to turn America into a christian theocracy?
Did Heath Ledger denounce all other religions besides Southern Baptist christianity?
Did Heath Ledger blame LGBT people for 9/11 and Katrina?
…and a hundred other disgusting actions on Falwell’s part I don’t have time to look up…
Jerry Falwell amply earned his mocking. In fact, he sought it out his entire life, and was proud to be an anathema to the Left.
But I guess there is one big difference between Heath Ledger and Jerry Falwell: Falwell never starred in a movie featuring a gay relationship. So I suppose to people like you Heath Ledger deserves to be pissed on after death…
Asshat…
…and regarding Falwell’s afterlife, I think MAJeff put it best: “He really deserves to be ass-fucked by satan’s barbed tail for all eternity.”…
for lack of a better way to put it, someone should have given mister gibson’s parents something better to do that night.
every time that weird looking human dingleberry runs his trap, he proves that he is a load his dad should have shot into a sock or that his mother should have swallowed
If it hadn’t been Ledger, it would have been someone else. If Rudy Giuliani died under less-than-heroic circumstances, you could probably count on Gibson or one of his fellow jerkwads to run pictures of Rudy in drag with some kind of homophobic slur. It’s the bigotry that counts, and the celebrity is just a vehicle for it.
Yeah, mocking the dead is really uncalled for.
Sorry, you’re under the impression that Falwell isn’t in Hell right now? I read that as Amanda posting a fact. If Falwell didn’t want to end up in Hell, he should have lived his life differently.
Well, Marilyn Monroe was found naked, so it’s possible that Ledger, like Monroe, just had an accidental overdose on sleeping pills.
Blue Jean, come on!
Everybody knows Marilyn Monroe was killed by The Kennedy’s to keep her from telling the truth about them…
Hey, wait a minute! Where were Bill and Hill in 1962? Maybe this was a tuneup for Vince Foster!…
[/snark]
Well, Marilyn Monroe was found naked, so it’s possible that Ledger, like Monroe, just had an accidental overdose on sleeping pills.
Michael Hutchence (from INXS) was found naked, but that was determined to be a suicide. So apparently naked suicides do happen.
G. and I were gossiping about this and he brought up Katrin Cartlidge, who was a British actress. She had dinner with friends, went home with what she thought was a cold, and died of pneumonia before morning. Natural causes do happen, even to rich and famous people.
Not that it would stop Gibson from being an asshole, of course. There’s no power on earth that could do that.
Sleeping pills… That doesn’t mean the same thing now as it did 30 years ago. Sleeping pills used to be a barbiturate, which, if taken in excess would most certainly kill you.
There is no overdose entry for Lunesta in the PDR. The effects of taking too much are more of the same of the regular side effects. There is reference to some one having taken 56 times the recommended maximum dosage with no long term negative effects.
When the police say sleeping pills, the press is trained to think of that as a possible cause of death. With current sleep aides, that’s actually very unlikely.
Well, but I thought Michael Hutchence died of autoerotic asphyxiation, which would explain the nudity. But I also don’t agree that people wouldn’t commit suicide naked. I’d say if someone’s suicidal, being embarrassed about being found naked wouldn’t be a top concern. It does sound more likely to me that Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose or bad drug interaction.
why is this lunatic still on the air? he is of the same ilk as don imus and rush limbaugh. however, imus lost his job while those particular morons are still on the air.
there’s not much difference between john gibson and fred phelps. wonder if gibson will also be picketing ledger’s funeral?
Because complete and utter asshats own and control the news media, and cannot be trifled with petty things like human decency.
there’s not much difference between john gibson and fred phelps. wonder if gibson will also be picketing ledger’s funeral?
This isn’t a precise quote, but the news guy on the morning radio show I listen to said something along the lines of, “I’m a churchgoer and I believe in public order, but I can’t help hoping some big Aussies show up at Heath Ledger’s funeral and kick the crap out of those Westboro idiots.”
“I’m a churchgoer and I believe in public order, but I can’t help hoping some big Aussies show up at Heath Ledger’s funeral and kick the crap out of those Westboro idiots.”
HaHaHa. Now THAT I would love to see.
MikeAss:
Never said they were. Just pointing out the hypocrisy of all the righteous indignation going on here. But, by all means, don’t let a little moral inconsistency get in the way of your martyr complexes.
“Never said they were. Just pointing out the hypocrisy of all the righteous indignation going on here.”
Well, assCheeko, as they would say in The South, “Bless your heart…”
“But, by all means, don’t let a little moral inconsistency get in the way of your martyr complexes.”
…”get in the way of your martyr complexes”? That one came out of left-field. Did you get that out of the Blog Troll’s Phrasebook, forgetting that you have to choose phrases that actually fit the situation?
Quoting myself above referring to you: “Asshat…”
Gee, up here in the North we’re nowhere as polite as that (re: bless your heart), MikeEss- we go straight to “oh, fuck off”.
Or my brother-in-law’s favorite: Go stick your head in a pig!
“…we go straight to “oh, fuck off”.”
I know what you mean. I live in California (born and raised), which would generally be considered part of the North.
But I figured, since I live in SOUTHERN California, I’d give the old “bless your heart” a spin. It always sounded to me like a nice cool way to say “fuck off”…
:)
Calling a man evil and pointing out that damage he did in his life is different from mocking him.
Jerry Falwell was an intolerant man, who vilified others and denied them their humanity.
I hated his cruelty, his venality, his contempt for human freedom when he was alive. That did not change at his death.
But I did not mock him.
Heath Ledger was an actor. He committed none of Falwell’s outrages. What John Gibson lit into was not Heath, but a character he played in a movie. And he MOCKED him because of this.
I would have been disgusted if John Gibson had laid into him because he had the moral gall to play a gay character in a movie. It’d be dtupid, but I’d hers stupider. (”Ian Mckelen–what a terrible man for having played Magneto! Did he really hate humanity so much?”)
But he laughed at a man’s death.
Why do people have to be so MEAN? Fuckin’ A! It’s like TMZ running teasers during the CNN newscast about when Britney Spears is going to die–I truly think that we’ve reached a new level of cruelty when we mock people in death and try to goad others into suicide. I honestly haven’t seen people act this mean since, I don’t know, the 8th grade.
Chico,
“Never said they were.”
You implied it strongly.
The original post doesn’t denounce Gibson on some fundamental principle that dead people should never, ever be mocked in any way. It seems clear to me that Pam is denouncing Gibson because’s he’s yucking it up at a someone’s death because he portrayed a gay person. The same goes for the comments.
Falwell actually deserved to be mocked post-mortem if only for the reason that Gibson here deserves to be denounced: Falwell was fond of pissing on many innocent people’s graves.
The claim that there’s a moral inconsistency between denouncing Gibson and mocking Falwell rests on a misreading of the words on this page (which put focus on the why and the who) or on the suggestion that Falwell and Ledger’s individual outrages are comparable.
Jeez, I looked at the Media Matters page on John Gibson, having previously had only a foggy idea of him as the guy who had Steve Almond on his show so he could push Horowitzian ideas about academics. This guy is a lot closer to Michael Savage or David Duke than to, say, O’Reilly or Hume. Didn’t know Murdoch went that far. Sheet.
“This guy is a lot closer to Michael Savage or David Duke than to, say, O’Reilly or Hume.”
…but without the massive intellectual heft…
Something someone pointed out to me:
Fred Phelps, asshole extraordinaire, is going to picket the funeral for obvious homohate reasons.
In attendance at the funeral are going to beMel Gibson, Sean Penn, Christian Bale, and Russell Crowe all mourning the passing of a good friend.
If celebrities are going to overreact and kick someone’s ass, please, let it be THIS someone’s ass.
I look forward with LONGING for the day I can mock the dead John Gibson (although, why wait? WTF is up with that asshole’s hair?) for being a clueless hateful piece of shit.
Did I jump the gun, chico?
“in attendance at the funeral are going to beMel Gibson, Sean Penn, Christian Bale, and Russell Crowe all mourning the passing of a good friend.
If celebrities are going to overreact and kick someone’s ass, please, let it be THIS someone’s ass.”
You are so right.
I would kill to see Russell Crowe kick Phelpsie’s ass. We all know these hayseeds are fucking nuts, but what makes them particularly evil is that they really strike people at their most vulnerable moments - at funerals -where people are GRIEVING and less likely to react in anger because they are overwhelmingly sad, or don’t want to be disrespectful to the dead or their family and cause a scene.
I have an update post with Gibson’s non-apology apology.
Ah, a nonpology.
The funeral’s going to be held in Australia, where most of Ledger’s family lives. So unless the Phelps cult can afford to shell out a fortune for the airfare, they probably won’t have the opportunity to act like assholes.
Of course, if they DO, they’ll be stuck on a plane, trapped, for hours on end, with people who might recognize them, and thus be subjected to some well deserved verbal abuse.
Or maybe just a flight attendant who’ll take “special care” with their food.
There is a big difference between mocking someone who did despicable things and mocking someone because of a role they played in a movie.
The funeral’s going to be held in Australia, where most of Ledger’s family lives. So unless the Phelps cult can afford to shell out a fortune for the airfare, they probably won’t have the opportunity to act like assholes.
I don’t think this is fair. I’m willing to shell out to get one of the Phelps family halfway there - I urge other people to also contribute to paying for the Phelpses to be flown halfway from America to Australia…
I say fly the Phelpses to Australia, but only if there is an abundance of hungry dingoes awaiting them.
You know what? I’m glad Fallwell’s dead. I’m glad his feculent corpse is merely rotting in the ground instead of increasing the rot in the body politic. The world is better because he is no longer in it.
Think I’m a hateful asshole? So be it. My friends and I texted and did our little happy dances that day. Now I’m just waiting for Helms.
I say fly the Phelpses to Australia, but only if there is an abundance of hungry dingoes awaiting them.
You know, I wasn’t terribly upset the first time I saw that Gibson remark about “finding a way to quit him”. By itself, it struck me as black humour of the sort which abounds involving dingoes and babies - Joss Whedon, for example, made a reference to this in Buffy. I had to wonder, looking at all the hyperbolic response, whether people had the same shock over jokes about babies being eaten by dogs.
The later context that emerged made it clear Gibson was a homophobic asshole, though.
Might be because I’m from a different tradition than American humour, perhaps.