The passion of the MelTom: Gibson and Cruise have long been untouchable movie icons despite their attacks on things say. So should we rejoice in their recent public humiliations?

It's not even Labor Day, and already 2006 is a banner year for lavender schadenfreude.

Like many gays out there, you probably felt as I did that the career juggernauts of Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise would continue to bulldoze over our feeble protests forever. Whoever cared that gays and lesbians had collectively and quietly been boycotting these guys--call them the MelTom--for years? Just look at the figures of their recent successes: Cruise's War of the Worlds grossed almost $600 million worldwide last year; in 2002, Gibson pushed M. Night Shyamalan's Signs to a $400-million-plus global gross. As a director, he scored even bigger with The Passion of the Christ (2004), which did nearly $400 million in the United States alone.

Lest you've forgotten, here's Gibson talking back in the 1990s: "Who's going to think I'm gay? Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?" Certainly not when it comes to his own butt, Gibson insisted. "They take it up the ass," he said. "This is only for taking a shit." Which he illustrated by pointing to his own presumably untouched rear.

Gibson's lame remarks about gays--and more recently about Jews--are so over-the-top repugnant that most rational people can't help but want to upchuck. The film images that his bigotry has produced, however, are far more insidious: In his Passion, not only are Jews depicted as being responsible for the murder of Jesus Christ but Herod is played as a mascaraed old queen who rules over a tranny court. Worse, Satan is half man and half woman--to social conservatives, the very definition of a fag or a dyke.

Then there's King Edward I, a.k.a. Longshanks, in Gibson's Braveheart. The film's cathartic applause-grabbing moment comes when Longshanks throws the male lover of the future Edward II out the window because he thinks the two fairies have neglected their duty to kill the rebel William "Braveheart" Wallace. Instead of provoking outrage and condemnation, this gleeful, historically bogus depiction of a gay-bashing saw the gentiles and Jews of Hollywood band together to award Gibson Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director in 1996.

The equally overhyped Cruise has fashioned a second career out of a similar take-no-prisoners strategy: suing for libel anyone who dares question his sexual orientation. Yet despite his tedious legal habits, he's had an uninterrupted string of movie hits longer than those of either Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart. It seemed Tom's popularity would go on forever.

Until it didn't.

What hubris led Cruise to trash Brooke Shields for treating her postpartum depression with proven medications? Here's a celeb who has been so sequestered away in his own ever-thickening cocoon of superstardom that he thinks the height of romance is proposing to his girlfriend atop the Eiffel Tower--and jumping up and down on a couch like a 5-year-old to demonstrate the power of his feelings for "this woman," as he's called her.

Thanks to the former Pretty Baby and a newer baby named Suri, Cruise's last film proved to be a surprise money-loser for Paramount. Mission: Impossible III was a quarter-billion-dollar boondoggle, grossing just $133 million domestically, of which Paramount might see no more than $70 million. No wonder the studio appears none too eager to renew its production deal with the out-of-work movie star.

Even Cruise's muzzling of those relentless gay rumors has foundered: On the eve of M:I:III's release, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone accused Cruise of preventing Comedy Central--a division of Viacom, as is Paramount--from rebroadcasting their show's "Trapped in the Closet" episode, which has two Scientology acolytes literally sharing Stan Marsh's bedroom closet: "John Travolta and Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet," the cartoon characters scream repeatedly. Cruise denied any involvement, but his reputation in Hollywood wound up taking a big hit--or rather, three: In early July, South Park's "Closet" episode nabbed an Emmy nomination; two weeks later it finally reaired; and in August a back-cover ad in Variety, paid for by Comedy Central, congratulated the show for its Emmy nom. The image? The South Park characters posed in front of a drawing of the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood beneath a banner that read: C'MON, JEWS ... SHOW THEM WHO REALLY RUNS HOLLYWOOD.

At least the world between Gotham and Hollywood finally woke up to Gibson's long-festering anti-Semitism. On July 28, a drunk-driving Gibson exposed his bigotry to all the world by shouting at an arresting policeman, "Fucking Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?" He later blamed the outburst on his alcoholism, which, as every card-carrying member of Alcoholics Anonymous knows, can cloud your thinking on world history as soon as you are presented with a pair of handcuffs.

Far more stinky and overpowering than the booze was the hubris of Mel's following threat, as detailed in the police report: "Gibson almost continually threatened me, saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me." Just for good measure, Mel added, "I'm going to fuck you" to the male arresting officer. But then he had the prescience to add, "My life is fucked." He left it unclear how exactly he was going to "fuck" the police officer, but frankly, when it comes to two guys, there's only one available orifice, as Mel himself once pointed out--literally, with his finger.

And so there it is: a stinkball of repressive religions and intolerance all rolling down the 15-year-old hill of mean-spirited prejudice that is the MelTom--a moniker that sounds remarkably like "meltdown."

My vision for the beast's future? Perhaps Cruise will soon be relegated to that career limbo where Eddie ("He was only trying to buy a newspaper") Murphy now lives after reportedly helping out a transvestite prostitute on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood at 5 in the morning. Fat suits and talking animals, Tom; get used to it.

And when Gibson gets around to doing his nationally televised mea culpa, we hope Jay Leno can unlock his lantern jaw long enough to ask a few hardball questions. May I suggest a few?

First up: "Isn't it time you disagree with the Bill O'Reillys of the world and admit that The Passion of the Christ really was informed by your hatred of Jews?"

And: "Has it ever occurred to you that the real villain of Braveheart is not the 'gentle' Edward II, who had a hot rod rammed up his ass by a bunch of ale-guzzling frat boys like yourself, but his warmongering, gay-bashing father, Long-shanks?"

And for good measure: "When Diane Sawyer asked you about your Holocaust-denying father, you replied, 'Gotta leave A it alone.' Mel, isn't it time we go there?"

That would be a start. Answer those questions honestly, Mel, and I for one will think about forgiving you.

Jodie's alternative opinion

"[Mel Gibson is] one of the nicest most honest men I have ever met ... Is he an anti-Semite? Absolutely not ... Mel is honest, loyal, kind, but alcoholism has been a lifelong struggle for him and his family."

--Jodie Foster, Gibson's costar in 1993's Maverick, as quoted in the Los Angeles Times, August 4

Hofler is the author of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson (Carroll & Graf).