Some More Commentary on the Newest Mel Gibson Scandal

I'll get straight to the point. Despite the fact that I believe Oksana Grigorieva to be a gold-digger who voluntarily busted up another woman's marriage, I feel that her allegations of abuse against Mel Gibson to be true. Why else wouldn't Gibson categorically deny them or, at the very least, question the authenticity of the recordings? And why cry "I'm being extorted" and not "I didn't do it"? 

The person that I'm having a hard time believing is Mel's ex-wife, Robyn. She recently swore out a statement claiming that he never abused her during the course of their marriage. I have a hard time believing that. Not because violent men tend to abuse ALL their partners.  Not because he publicly questioned gender equality which is something that wife-beaters are notorious for doing. Not because he had the stones to suggest that his wife wasn't getting into Heaven because "[t]here is no salvation for those outside the [Catholic] Church ."  Not because Robyn has a multi-million dollar divorce settlement still hanging in the balance.

I think Mel was abusive toward his first wife simply because he seemed to spend so much time onscreen pretending not to be married or, more accurately, pretending that the Missus had travelled to The Great Beyond. Is it my imagination or is it that Mel's most iconic roles have him playing a man with a dead wife? Mad Max--widower. Martin Riggs--widower. William Wallace--widower. Rev. Graham Hess from Signs--a widower. He played a recently widowed single father of seven (the same number of children he had with Robyn, coincidentally) in The Patriot. And in 1999's Payback, his character's wife intentionally OD's on heroin after he darkens her doorstep, leaving him to find her body.

I admit, this could have been the very married Gibson's way of avoiding compromising love scenes. (Actors do have to get naked for those.)  But I can't help but to wonder if Gibson sought out these roles as some sort of passive-aggressive wish fulfillment. After all, how else do you get out of a marriage when you're a supposedly committed member of a religious sect that doesn't allow divorce?

I wonder how the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Gibson took it. I hope she slept with a hammer.