Controversial conspiracy theorist extraordinaire (and sometime director) Oliver Stone briefly waded into Mel Gibson territory this week when he claimed Jews controlled the media and that Hitler, in retrospect, maybe wasn't such a bad guy after all.
But he has one thing Mel doesn't—a public sense of remorse for his "clumsy" words. Well, either that or a really good publicist.
In the wake of Stone's ill-advised interview with the Sunday Times of London, which broke all manner of land-speed records to get disseminated across the interwebs, the Wall Street 2 director (good luck on that press tour, buddy) has offered up an apology:
"In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret," he said.
"Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity—and it was an atrocity."
The same could be said for his comments, though this isn't the first time he's spoken out against the vilification of, well, history's greatest villains.
As for his latest gaffe, however, Stone referred to the "Jewish domination of the media" and stated that Israel "f--ked up United States foreign policy for years."
Not content to stop there, Stone also proclaimed, "Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein. German industrialists, the American and the British. He had a lot of support…Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.
"There's a major lobby in the United States," Stone said. "They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington."
Well, they certainly stayed on top of this comment.
The American Jewish Committee was among the first to formally condemn Stone's comments yesterday.
"By invoking this grotesque, toxic stereotype, Oliver Stone has outed himself as an anti-Semite," the group said.
The Anti-Defamation League and the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants also spoke out against the director.
"His words conjure up some of the most stereotypical and conspiratorial notions of undue Jewish power and influence," ADL national director Abraham Foxman said.
Incidentally, Stone's apology didn't cover his comments about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, both of whom he also defended.
"Iran isn't necessarily the good guy," Stone said, calling American policy toward the nation "horrible."
"But we don't know the full story!" Stone later said Chavez was "a brave, blunt, earthy man."
So, if no one else, he'll at least be able to hang out with Sean Penn.
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