Can a good PR staff do "tshuva," repent?

I was in New York when Mel Gibson's #%&$#&*% hit the fans.

The story vied with the war between Hisbollah and Israel for headlines and time on the newscasts. At the same time, Landis, the Tour d'France winner, was revealed to have failed his drug tests, meaning, he may have had taken a "performance enhancer" when he won the race. He defended himself by confronting the media, and getting a top defense team, to show the inaccuracy of the tests.

Back to Gibson. The news media kept showing pictures of his drunkenly partying with some pretty young women and hamming it up to the enthusiastic cameras. Some of the women became instant celebreties as they were interviewed about their evening with Gibson.

The policeman who pulled the drunk and speeding Gibson over let people know the nasty, anti-Semitic things the star said to him. Many people believe that liquor reveals the truth of a man, and over the years there had been many reports of Gibson's anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

His staff worked hard writing apologetic statements, and it certainly helped that Gibson is a good actor, so his "tshuva" performance looked convincing. But remember that he is an actor, and his staff is professional, too.

So there's nothing sincere in Gibson's statements, but about Landis, who knows?