Mel Gibson's "spittle-spangled" audio assaults on his girlfriend were "instant Web and cable-TV sensations," says Frank Rich in The New York Times. But the movie star's public implosion tells a bigger story, too. Back in 2004, following the release of his film The Passion of the Christ, Gibson was a "powerful and canonized figure in the political and cultural pantheon of American conservatism." The fact that he has no defenders today shows that the religious right has suffered nearly as preciptous a fall as its Hollywood standard bearer:
It seems preposterous in retrospect that a film as bigoted and noxious as "The Passion" had so many reverent defenders in high places in 2004... Today you never hear conservatives mention their embrace of "The Passion" back then — if they mention Gibson at all. (Fox News has barely covered the new tapes.) But it isn't just Gibson who has been discredited. Even as he self-immolated, so did many of the moral paragons who had rallied around him as a culture-war martyr.
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