Just a few days ago, Russell Crowe caused quite a stir by drunk tweeting his random thoughts concerning what he described as the “barbaric” practices of circumcision and abortion. In response, Kaiser had a lot of fun with Crowe’s obviously amusing and joking statements about these topics, especially when he called out Jewish director Eli Roth, who is not only friends with Crowe but also produced the actor’s upcoming movie, The Man With the Iron Fist. If you’ll remember correctly, Eli Roth has also endured his own infamous Twitter controversy, which took place about a year and a half ago and consisted of a shameless amount of cyber sex and tissue evidence. So when several movie blogs stumbled over each other in a mad dash to see who could be the first to label Crowe’s words as “anti-Semitic,” it’s only natural that Roth would be at the defensive forefront:

Eli Roth is outraged that a reporter for The Hollywood Reporter took what he says was a “joking exchange between friends” — Eli and Russell Crowe — and then attacked Crowe as being anti-Semitic.

It all started when Eli and Russell — who often tease each other on Twitter — were joking about circumcision. Crowe tweeted, “I love my Jewish friends. I love the apple and the honey and the funny little hats but stop cutting yr babies,” adding, “I’ll take attentive parenting over barbarism.”

Apparently a reporter from The Hollywood Reporter saw the exchange and went after Russell with a headline that said he “insults Jews.”

Eli tells TMZ, “The headline blatantly attempts to make Russell look like an anti-Semite. It’s tabloid journalism at its worst.”

Eli adds, “No one contacted either of us. It’s terrible. Russell is a great person and respectful of all religions.”

And, Eli says, “The press is trying to terrify celebrities into not using Twitter. They want to show they can still ruin you. It’s sickening.”

[From TMZ]

While Eli Roth obviously has a vested interest in Crowe’s public image at this point, I’d also wager that the two have a pretty good understanding between themselves of what constitutes a joke. While perhaps Crowe misjudged the collective Twitter response (especially when it comes to opportunistic reporters), all of this should be taken in context of Crowe’s overall Twitter pattern, which is generally casual when it comes to his vernacular and certainly not meant to be taken seriously. Still, does Roth have a point when he claims that certain media outlets would hope to intimidate celebrities into not using Twitter? Perhaps, but I think the more likely culprit is that Hollywood Reporter recently moved into a subscription format and would hope to reel in more paid readers with the help of so-called “controversial” headlines.

Meanwhile, Crowe was also snapped in his native Australia while taking a yacht-associated ride on a jet-ski. I’ll let you be the judge of that little excursion.

Correction: I accidentally posted photos of James Packer, the billionaire that was jet-skiing with Russell, whose physical transformation has indeed been drastic but, well, not that drastic. Here are some updated photos below:

Photos courtesy of Fame Pictures