Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent always looked too dazed and confused to walk down a runway, let alone design haute-couture clothing for models to do so. The only other who struck me as weird in this way was Christian Dior’s creative director, John Galliano, who always seemed more interested in impersonating surrealist painter Salvador Dalí than in designing clothes.
But as weird as he came across I would never have thought that Galliano harbored more anti-Semitic demons than Mel Gibson. Yet he has reportedly been hurling such vile and racist rants in public lately that Dior was forced to fire him yesterday.
Actually, after a French couple had him arrested on Thursday for verbally assaulting them at Parisian café La Perle, Dior only suspended the notoriously eccentric Galliano. According to a March 1 report by Reuters, he spewed all manner of profanities at the couple, which he punctuated by saying to the woman, “Dirty Jewish face … you should be dead,” and to the man, “fucking Asian bastard, I will kill you.”
But, evidently, what forced the fashion house to finally fire him was a video that went viral over the weekend of an incident, reportedly from last October, which shows Galliano declaring the following to a group of young girls at the very same café:
I love Hitler! People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed.
(The Sun, February 28, 2011)
Galliano insists that the person in the October video is not him. But I have seen the video, several times, and he would have to convince me beyond all reasonable doubt that I have lying eyes before I believe him.
This is why I think ordering his lawyers to file a defamation suit to protect his good name is nothing but a PR stunt. Indeed, this is rather like Gibson filing a defamation suit after tapes of him hurling slurs that would make any anti-Semite, racist, or misogynist blush went viral.
Meanwhile, it could not have helped Galliano’s case that Natalie Portman, the new face of Dior, issued the following statement on Monday – less than 24 hours after winning the Academy Award (and worldwide acclaim) for her role in Black Swan:
I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano’s comments that surfaced today. In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way. I hope at the very least, these terrible comments remind us to reflect and act upon combating these still-existing prejudices that are the opposite of all that is beautiful.
(E Online, February 28, 2011)
No doubt Dior was already ruing the lost sales and goodwill it suffered when Natalie decided to vent her disgust by refusing to wear a Dior Couture gown to the Oscars on Sunday night. Instead, she wore one by Black Swan costumers Rodarte.
In truth, though, the French are almost as sensitive about and vigilant against anti-Semitism as the Germans. For them the Dreyfus affair (in which the 1890s French establishment willfully scapegoated a Jewish military officer as, ironically enough, a German spy) remains almost as much of a stain on their collective conscience as the Holocaust remains on that of the Germans.
Hence there’s no way Dior, the premier fashion house in France, could even countenance retaining Galliano after the publication of such Hitlerian utterances, no matter how drunk he might have been at the time. Especially since, as Mel found out, most people believe the aphorism, in vino veritas. I commend Dior for acting so swiftly.
NOTE: French prosecutors have charged Galliano with anti-Semitic and abusive behavior. They say he will stand trial sometime between April and June. Making anti-Semitic remarks in France is a crime, which is punishable by up to six months in prison and $31,000.00 in fines.
According to the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism seven countries have enacted anti-Semitism legislation (namely, Romania, Spain, Mexico, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, and France).
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