“But Nancy Pelosi is Still a Total C*nt”: Gary Oldman Apologizes for Anti-Jewish Remarks in Playboy Interview

As
I noted yesterday, the great actor Gary Oldman recently outed
himself as a libertarian in a
Playboy interview.

That Oldman chose to do so immediately after ruminating on how
unfair it is that he isn’t allowed to call Rep. Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) “a cunt…a fucking useless cunt” is, well, what’s the
Italian phrase for comme ci comme ça again?

Oldman, who defended offensive outbursts by fellow rage-aholic
thespians Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin, also riffed on how
that tribe that runs Hollywood, well,
runs Hollywood:

Alec calling someone an F-A-G in the street while he’s pissed
off coming out of his building because they won’t leave him alone.
I don’t blame him. So they persecute. Mel Gibson is in a town
that’s run by Jews and he said the wrong thing because he’s
actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him—and doesn’t need
to feed him anymore because he’s got enough dough. He’s like an
outcast, a leper, you know? But some Jewish guy in his office
somewhere hasn’t turned and said, “That fucking kraut” or “Fuck
those Germans,” whatever it is? We all hide and try to be so
politically correct. That’s what gets me. It’s just the sheer
hypocrisy of everyone, that we all stand on this thing going,
“Isn’t that shocking?” [smiles wryly] All right. Shall I stop
talking now? What else can we discuss?

After
public denunciations from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and
Simon Wiesenthal Center, Oldman has apologized thus:

I am deeply remorseful that comments I recently made in the
Playboy Interview were offensive to many Jewish people. Upon
reading my comments in print—I see how insensitive they may be, and
how they may indeed contribute to the furtherance of a false
stereotype. Anything that contributes to this stereotype is
unacceptable, including my own words on the matter. If, during the
interview, I had been asked to elaborate on this point I would have
pointed out that I had just finished reading Neal Gabler’s superb
book about the Jews and Hollywood, An Empire of Their Own:
How the Jews invented Hollywood. The fact is that our
business, and my own career specifically, owes an enormous debt to
that contribution.

I hope you will know that this apology is heartfelt, genuine,
and that I have an enormous personal affinity for the Jewish people
in general, and those specifically in my life. The Jewish People,
persecuted thorough the ages, are the first to hear God’s voice,
and surely are the chosen people.

I would like to sign off with “Shalom Aleichem”—but under the
circumstances, perhaps today I lose the right to use that phrase,
so I will wish you all peace–Gary Oldman.

More
here (and all thanks to Alan Vanneman,
whose latest books, Author! Author! and Vorak of
Kolnap, are damn good reads).

The special-pleading half of me that is half-dago (in
a Joe DiMaggio sort of way) feels a need to say: Wait, but
Nancy Pelosi is still a cunt? 

I get it, the Last Acceptable Prejudice™ is slagging prominent
Italian Americans (whether they are objectively awful politicians
is a separate matter). You never have to apologize for making fun
of the spicy-meatball crowd. Where’s Joe Columbo, the mafiaoso who
started the Italian-American Civil Rights League in 1970, when you
need him? Oh, that’s right:
He was fatally shot at close range by another goombah at the
group’s second annual rally protesting negative media portrayals of
Italian Americans.