Is Mel Gibson the biggest hot mess in America?

MEL GIBSON

During a drunk driving arrest in 2006, Gibson told the arresting officer, who was Jewish, “F***ing Jews...the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Gibson came back for more in July 2010, when he allegedly made a series of racist and sexist remarks to his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva in a voicemail message. He allegedly called Latinos wetbacks, and told Grigorieva that “if you get raped by a pack of n***ers, it will be your fault.” This could be a career breaker for the actor.

RUSH LIMBAUGH

The blowhard radio show host has made many insensitive and outrageous comments over the years. Limbaugh once claimed that Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s Disease, “is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act ... This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox.” During the 2008 election, Limbaugh regularly played the “Barack, the Magic Negro” song on his radio program. But Limbaugh outdid himself recently when he said that President Obama and Oprah Winfrey only succeeded because they’re black.

BLACK TEA PARTY CANDIDATES

Arguably, the Tea Party movement is based partly on racial hatred, including anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab xenophobia, and a hatred of President Obama because he is black. But that did not stop some people of color from being a part of the party. Bill Randall, Republican Congressional nominee in North Carolina and black Tea Party candidate, claims that the BP oil spill was a conspiracy between the government and the oil giant. Tim Scott, who won the nomination to become the first black GOP Congressman since 2003, said that Obama’s health care plan is “a step towards socialism.” Curiously, Nikki Haley, a Sikh-American Tea Party candidate in South Carolina, won the Republican nomination for Governor of the Palmetto state. A white South Carolina state senator called Haley a raghead, and said “We've already got a raghead in the White House, we don't need another raghead in the governor's mansion.” Everyone has a price, and apparently for Tea Party Republicans of color, their price is very low. Perhaps The Boondocks' Uncle Ruckus should ride this wave and run for office as well.

ARTUR DAVIS

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Alabama) snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in his bid to become Alabama’s first black governor. He was the odds-on favorite who received endorsements from the major newspapers. His problem: he was a black candidate who ran away from the black vote. He shunned civil rights leaders and the black press, and voted against Obama’s health care bill to curry favor with conservative whites. As a result, he lost the Democratic primary to the more liberal, white candidate. Davis lost the black vote, including all of the districts that Obama won in 2008, and the Congressman’s own polling place. The lesson here is that you can’t disrespect your base.

GLENN BECK

Known for his incoherent rants and obsession with President Obama and fascism, Fox News host Glenn Beck said that Obama hates white people. Beck, who recently received an honorary degree from Liberty University, has shown no evidence of scholarship. Yet he started an online school called Beck University. And he angered civil rights groups because he booked the Lincoln Memorial for a rally on August 28, the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

JOE BARTON

Rep. Joe Barton, the Republican Congressman from Texas, apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for what he characterized as the White House “shakedown” to pay damage claims for the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Barton, a former oil industry consultant, has decided to side with the unpopular oil company, responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

STEVE KING

On G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show, Rep. Steve King (R- Iowa) said that “The president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race - on the side that favors the black person.” King has made numerous controversial statements in the past, including the suggestion that Muslim terrorists would dance in the streets if then-presidential candidate Obama were elected. He also said that illegal Haitian immigrants should be deported to help with the Haitian earthquake relief effort. A hot mess, indeed.

SHANNON PRICE

Shannon Price, ex-wife of Gary Coleman, pulled the plug on the former child actor after he suffered a brain hemorrhage upon taking a spill at his Utah home. Coleman had reportedly filed a restraining order against Price, who has sold photos of Coleman on his deathbed. It is doubtful that we have heard the last on this story.

RAND PAUL

Dr. Rand Paul, Tea party poster boy and Senate candidate from Kentucky, demonstrated that he was not ready for prime time when he argued that he was against the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and supported the right of businesses to discriminate. Later, he defended BP after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

BP OIL SPILL

The oil company BP created the most devastating environmental disaster in American history when a deepwater oil rig that it operated in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 people and spilling untold gallons of oil into the ocean. The spill continues, and no one knows the extent of damage it will create to life and livelihood when it is all over. BP has reserved a spot in the select club of people and corporations whose reputations are so badly damaged that no amount of public relations magic will likely repair them. BP, who touted its “green image” and flaunted its environmentally-friendly logo, is now competing with the likes of Goldman Sachs, Enron, Blackwater and Bernie Madoff in the hall of infamy.

ARIZONA

Arizona earned a well-deserved spot on theGrio’s Hot Mess List when the state’s legislature passed, and Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the toughest anti-immigration law in the country. Under the new law— which makes it a crime to fail to carry immigration documents— police must stop suspects and ask for their immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” they are in the country illegally. Concerned that the law will spark a new era of racial profiling, states, cities and organizations across the U.S. have enacted boycott campaigns against the state. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a white supremacist hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, helped to draft the legislation.

LAWRENCE TAYLOR

An NFL hall of famer and one of football’s greatest defensive players, former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor was charged with rape and solicitation in a case involving a 16-year-old girl.

TIGER WOODS

Golf powerhouse Tiger Woods betrayed his squeaky-clean image and tarnished his brand name after news came out that he had affairs with a multitude of women. The personal scandal cost him corporate endorsements. Woods is building a luxury golf resort and home development in Dubai, a city known for its slave labor practices.

TEXAS

In March the Texas Board of Education approved a curriculum change that mandates a conservative, white-Christian bias in the teaching of social science, and a whitewashing of the slave trade. This has resulted in a wholesale removal of African-Americans and Latinos from the textbooks, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and civil rights groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Conservatives unsuccessfully attempted to erase all references to hip-hop music from the history texts and replace it with country music. Conservatives also defeated attempts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures in the curriculum, in that heavily Latino state. "They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don't exist," said board member Mary Helen Berlanga. "They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians," she added. "They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world."
Recently, the Texas Republican Party released a policy platform that condemns affirmative action and DC statehood, supports the beating of foster children and more oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and opposes multiculturalism on the grounds that Martin Luther King was a Republican and would have wanted it that way. The policy paper also supports stripping ex-felons of the right to vote, allowing employers to discriminate, eliminating all gun regulations, and making it a crime to perform or issue a license for a same-sex marriage.

JORAN VAN DER SLOOT

Prime suspect in the 2005 murder of Natalee Holloway in Aruba, Joran van der Sloot confessed to the May 30 murder of 21-year old Stefany Flores in Peru. Flores died five years to the day that Holloway was reported missing in Aruba. “My son is sick in his head,” van der Sloot’s mother said of her son. No arguments here.

DR. CONRAD MURRAY

Dr. Conrad Murray is fighting for his medical license because he had the misfortune of being Michael Jackson’s doctor, and on the scene when the King of Pop died under questionable circumstances. Joe Jackson just slapped a wrongful death suit on Murray, who is also fighting involuntary manslaughter charges. Doctors take an oath to do no harm, but Hollywood doctors have a reputation for caring about the money and enabling the drug habits of their celebrity patients.

ALVIN GREENE

The Democratic primary winner in this year’s South Carolina race for the U.S. Senate, Alvin Greene is the first African-American Senate nominee in South Carolina since Reconstruction. An unknown with no accomplishments, Greene received an involuntary honorable discharge from the military, and is the defendant in an obscenity case. The legitimacy of his primary victory is under question, and many people are speculating that he was a Republican plant. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), House Majority Whip has demanded an investigation into Greene, including who was behind his campaign and who bankrolled him.

NEW ORLEANS AND CHICAGO POLICE

Five current and former New Orleans police officers were recently charged in the shooting death and burning of a New Orleans man following Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, in the 70s, 80s and 90s, black men in Chicago were beaten and tortured into a confession by the cops for crimes they did not commit. Some of the victims were as young as 13. An ex-Chicago police commander named Jon Burge has been in the spotlight recently for torturing a man into a confession that led to a conviction and 24-year prison sentence.

WHITES IN BLACKFACE

Model Claudia Schiffer recently posed for an ad in an afro wig and blackface. Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie is playing Cleopatra on the big screen. Robert Downey Jr. played a black man in the movie Tropic Thunder. There are many talented black artists and actors out there, but they cannot find work because of reality shows, and because whites are portraying black people. Unfortunately, Al Jolson and the minstrel shows are making a twenty-first century comeback.

KWAME KILPATRICK

Few people rise to such heights and fall to such depths as former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick is a prisoner in a Michigan correctional facility, doing time for violating his probation in connection with a perjury case. The perjury was part of a text-message and sex scandal that cost him his position. Now, the Feds just indicted him on 19 fraud and tax charges for the alleged use of his nonprofit organization to pay campaign and personal expenses such as yoga, golf clubs, travel, and summer camp for his children.

ORRIN HATCH

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) recently proposed that the unemployed should undergo mandatory drug tests in order to receive unemployment benefits. During a time of widespread unemployment, when many of your own constituents are out of a job, the worst thing you can do is criminalize them.

PAYDAY LOANS AND SUBPRIME MORTGAGES

Predatory lending, which is nothing more than loansharking, is destroying the black community like crack cocaine. With average interest rates of 400 percent, payday lending—also known as cash advances—put lenders in a death spiral from which they cannot escape. And unscrupulous lenders steered black and Latino homeowners into sketchy subprime mortgages they could not afford, resulting in the largest loss of wealth to people of color in U.S. history. Blacks have lost up to $93 billion over the past eight years due to the mortgage crisis, while Latinos have lost as much as $98 billion. Meanwhile, since 2007, 2.1 million homes have been foreclosed and sold off, while nearly 6 million foreclosures have been initiated since 2007. That number could reach 13 million by 2014.