Liverpool Tales from the Mersey Mouth - A book by John Williams

• Liverpool's alien nation A short history of discrimination
• Guernica Liverpool Manhattan Time for me to get off the fence
• There ain't half been some clever bastards The mendacious cretins who instigated the Shoah
• The scent of a conman Raising a stink in Liverpool
• Show 'em the door The Phillistines are back in Liverpool
• The fourth Grace A new addition to the Liverpool family
• Those base football players How football taught us to clock in on time
• Liverpool Maze Rainy days and Mondays
• Staying alive Travelling light
• A fundamental error Not all Muslims are terrorists
• Upstarts The smaller they are the harder we fall
• Flake An open letter to Fred 'Fruit-cake' Leuchter
• Black is not the only shade Musings on the language of racialism
• Liverpool's Big Macs what Scousers might have been called
• The world's oldest crime A male point of view of women's violation
• Be a sport Fashion for laid back athletes
• Nobody is indispensable The diminished role of men
• Trees When blossom appears to wither on the branch
• What's cooking? The debt that civilisation owes women
• Know thy self Clipping time's wings
• Once there was a way Aberfan and corporate terrorism
• Me granddad's on a preservation order Liverpool world heritage site
• You say potato I say spud
• Doctor Yes Good doctors are the norm
• Top of the world Ma A man of peace
• Like a bird on a wire I have tried in my way to be free
• The writing's on the wall Little known Liverpool sayings
• Fortress Anfield or Maginot Line? Au Revoir Gerard Houllier
• The leaving of Liverpool Adieu Steven Gerrard?
• Working on the chain gang The age of innocence
• In my life Turn and face the strangers
• Breaking down the walls of heartache The cementing of hatred
• Danse macabre

If I am to persuaded of something important then I have to believe that the person putting forward the argument has some kind of pedigree with regard to meaningful thought. So when I see that Mel Gibson's father put forward the idea that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp and state that most of the European and Russian Jews had actually fled to America or Australia I was forced to seek out Hutton Gibson's previous contributions to our understanding of the world.

It seems he also believes that the attack on the twin towers was carried out by remote control and not by Al Quaida, (but doesn't say who had hold of the transmitter), and asserts that Paul VI as the anti-pope who has softened the Church's intolerance of heretics! What does he want, the return of the stake, the rack and the

inquisition? Love thy neighbour, as long as he's a believer.

To anybody who has had anything to do with American immigration officials the idea that upwards of five million Jews could somehow sneak into America unobserved then Hutton's idea is simply ludicrous. Imagine the scene.

Ellis Island Friday evening sometime in 1945.

Two uniformed customs men are staring at the Hudson River.

FIRST CUSTOMS MAN: Are there any movies being made here?

SECOND CUSTOMS MAN: Not sure. Why do you ask?

FIRST CUSTOMS MAN: I just seen a bunch of Jews in boats.

SECOND CUSTOMS MAN: How many?

FIRST CUSTOMS MAN: Hard to say,maybe five or six million.

SECOND CUSTOMS MAN: Five or six million! That's a helluva lot of extras!

FIRST CUSTOMS MAN: Sure is, and they were all jumpin' into the water so I figure they are making a movie of the ten commandements...crossin' the Red Sea an all.

SECOND CUSTOMS MAN: Whatever. As long as they ain't wetbacks!

Enough discussion of Hutton Gibson. I really want to have a look at what possible effects, if any, that the ravings of Hutton Gibson had on his son.

It seems to me that Gibson junior has made a career out of portraying messianic characters...Mad Max restores order to the apocalyptic post world war III world...Fletcher Christian saves his men from the clutches of the tyrant Bligh, in absolute defiance of historical truth I might add...The Patriot is another complete denial of history wherein the British are depicted as proto Nazis...Braveheart, directed by and starring Gibson junior was almost a Celtic version of the greatest story ever told, wherein the Romans were replaced by Edward the first, the ruthless King of England, and Christ was replaced by the oft betrayed William Wallace...and now there is Gibson the younger's film, The Passion.

I wouldn't mind betting that he was only persuaded from playing the lead by those who pointed out that he was too old to play a man who in his thirty three years on earth didn't smoke, drink or eat junk food and who also spoke with a Jewish accent.

Gibson is a member of an outlawed Catholic sect. So, first off, he isn't a Catholic in my opinion. That doesn't stop him from wanting to be the saviour of his old church. As if conducting the mass in Latin makes the Gospel more true.

Just how many movies of Christ's agony do we need to get the message? But perhaps that's not the aim of the movie as it is possible that it aimed at raising other types of passion than to engender a resurrection of Christian values.

My thanks to Tim Kelly and Brigitte C for the new look to my site

© John Williams Liverpool 1999