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Having completed the final stages of his home-based, outpatient recovery program ("Step 11: Turn off Oprah. Step 12: Congratulations! You are now a sober and tolerant asset to society..."), Mel Gibson has at last emerged from the cocoon-like confines of his Malibu estate and gotten back to business, with two recent appearances in the American heartland in support of his latest extinct language opus, Apocalypto:

The filmmaker and actor, fiercely criticized for his anti-Semitic outburst when he was arrested for drunk driving last July, showed the as-yet unfinished movie on Friday, first at a casino and at Cameron University in Oklahoma, where he arrived in wig and disguise, according to The Associated Press. Then he moved on to the Fantastic Fest film festival in Austin, Tex., where he compared the American troop deployment in Iraq to the kind of human sacrifice depicted in his film, about ancient Mayans, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

We're glad Gibson opted to forego the disguise—it would be a shame if his first foray back into the public eye was marred with accusations of yet more anti-Semitic bigotry, when a simple attempt at being unnoticed in a pair of Groucho Marx schnoz-and-glasses was misinterpreted as a tasteless performance art piece callously invoking ugly, racist caricatures regarding Jewish physical traits.