And the "Longest Answer to a Yes or No Question" Award Goes To

You've probably heard about the various controversies surrounding Mel Gibson's new joint, "Passion of the Christ". One issue is that Mel's father is a religious leader of sorts, who among other things is known for allegedly denying that the holocaust took place, ar at least claiming that the numbers are greatly exaggerated.

So in her interview with Mel for Reader's Digest, right-wing speechwriter Peggy Noonan (the one who coined "thousand points of light", i believe) tries to set the record straight: "You're going to have to go on record. The Holocaust happened, right?"

I'm not sure that Mel's response quite puts me at ease:

Gibson: "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."

Well, I guess that was sort of a "yes", kind of? He is agreeing that there is evidence of holocaust-related program activities? I dunno, kinda sketchy.