Why We Should Leave Mel Alone

When his words crashed into the internet like a car-wreck, we couldn’t look away.

Mad Mel is at it again, people said.

I never liked him anyway, they said.

There is a lot to say on this topic, but no one is stating the obvious: We should leave Mel alone.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no sympathy for this man. The vile comments he allegedly made make me want to throw heavy feminist tomes at his head.

It’s great that domestic violence is suddenly in the headlines. It is a topic that deserves much more attention than it gets.

But it makes me a bit sick that we are using it for entertainment.

RadarOnline, the site which released the transcript, and now the audio, has said that they will release more of the 30 minute recording allegedly between Mel Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his child.

“We felt it was so newsworthy and so explosive we simply had to report what we heard,” said David Perel, the site’s founder and executive vice president

“It is shocking, not only for content — which is horrific — but for tone. It is one of the most vile things we have ever heard.”

But the slow drip, drip, drip of information is designed to make the company money. While I don’t begrudge them their profit, I take issue with turning a personal tragedy into public spectacle.

I’m fine with throwing Mel into the lion’s den but we should not be reveling in this kind of pain. How horrible for Oksana to have her former lover call her a whore. How sad that their child can be heard screaming in the background as he wishes her raped. How pathetic of us to gossip about this by the water cooler, as if it is a substitute for our TV dramas.

How vile for us to turn this kind of misery into entertainment.