I honestly don’t get this. After all the furor over “The Passion of the Christ” has been turned down to a simmer, and with only a week to go before the movie opens, suddenly now Hutton Gibson decides to do a radio interview about Jews and the Holocaust. Hutton, Mel Gibson’s father, is clearly a classic anti-semite. I don’t think that’s ever been in question; the only question is what Mel believes. Mel won’t talk about his dad, which is both respectful and perhaps defensive.

The question is, even if Hutton is an anti-Jewish hatemonger, is he also irrational and insane? Can he be unaware of the dangers of his big yap? Does he not know that his son has $50 million at risk in a movie that opens next week which could go poof if he starts openly claiming that the holocaust is a hoax and most of the Jews just moved to Florida?

I’ll be clear here: I’m not arguing that it’s okay to hate as long as you shut up. Hutton’s beliefs are despicable. But the fact that this guy would endanger his own son’s finances, career and good name by saying things that even a bigot should realize is inflamatory…it makes me wonder if he is not in his right mind at age 85. There’s more going on here.

I don’t have any fears that “The Passion of the Christ” is anti-semitic, or even that it will somehow unintentionally make audiences hate Jews more. I base this on several things: the positive reviews from critics both Christian and secular, the quibbles raised in Newsweek which strike me as minor, and a hunch that most everyone going will be just plain excited to see a biblical movie in their lifetime. Plus, this clearly is a different treatment of the 12 hours of Christ’s death than we’ve seen before, in terms of the brutality.

My only real concern is, really, that Mel may privately hold even a portion of his dad’s views. Peggy Noonan gave him a couple real softballs in his interview for Reader’s Digest and he flubbed them, demonstrating that he may also be a holocaust-denier but is wiser than his dad in how to hide it. That concerns me. Not for the sake of his movie, but for his sake.