Mel Gibson and Kari Lake: why not?

We sure do punch above our weight sometimes. Whether it’s hotshot political strategists exporting our worst impulses to Britain, journos offering their insights to the likes of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, or “alpha male” former councillors showing up on Fox News as MAGA comic relief, Australians are represented among the world’s hard right in a way other countries of comparable population size can only dream of.

And now, via the Instagram account of failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and (coincidentally) “big steal” advocate Kari Lake, it’s Hollywood superstar and walking repudiation of the concept of cancel culture, our very own Mel Gibson!

I mean, I say our Mel, but I suspect that most Australians have been increasingly comfortable with acknowledging Gibson’s actual birthplace is New York since… I don’t know, let’s say 2006ish?

For those not familiar, Lake is a former Fox local news anchor, who refused to call Arizona for Joe Biden, in defiance of her own network, during the 2020 presidential election. Since quitting, she has enthusiastically embraced the baseless theory that Donald Trump won in 2020 only to have the election stolen from him via fraud.

She run for governor in 2022, lost, and has been claiming that that election was stolen too. She has told cheering crowds that she will lock up COVID-era chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci (calling him “that liar”), as well as anyone involved with the “corrupt, shady, shoddy election of 2020”. Trump is considering her as a potential running mate in 2024.

“Thank God for the creative genius of Mel Gibson. Without him there would be very few movies for me to enjoy. God Bless you, Mel,” reads the caption.

What might they have spoken about? Perhaps the effect of the radical left’s cancel culture agenda and the effect that has had on Gibson’s powerful filmography, punctuated as it is by little six-month gaps where he has to sit in the naughty corner after being caught going on a racist rant, before being hired for family comedies, or being showered in Oscar nominations for his latest florid, bloodthirsty work.