"We're talking about me right now, and me taking responsibility for my words and actions, and I'm certainly not going to use him to sort of put anything off of me. It isn't the explanation for what happened that night. It isn't. It has nothing to do with it. That's in my own heart." - Mel Gibson, in response to Diane Sawyer's question about his father's anti-Semitic views during an interview on Good Morning America
Mel's statement contains two pronoun errors and two phrases that should be treated as errors if encountered in standardized examination questions.
The phrase "me taking responsibility" contains the gerund "taking." Since a gerund is a noun, the pronoun that precedes it should be in the possessive case.
The phrase "sort of" is very common in everyday speech, and Mel's use of this colloquialism is perfectly acceptable in this informal context. However, this phrase (and the similar phrase "kind of") may appear in standardized examination questions and you will be expected to identify it as an error in diction. It can be challenging to replace this phrase with a more formal word or phrase that conveys the same meaning; in Mel's statement, "sort of" can be interpreted to mean "somewhat" or "somehow." Also note that the phrase "sort of" splits the infinitive "to put"; when modifying the sentence to avoid the phrase "sort of," put the replacement elsewhere in the sentence so that the infinitive is not split.
The phrase "off of" is also common in everyday speech, but it is another construction that the writers of standardized examinations consider to be an error.
Mel's use of "of me" at the end of his first sentence is incorrect because the subject and the object of the preposition refer to the same person. In such instances, a reflexive pronoun should be used.
This version of Mel's quote corrects the pronoun errors and avoids the use of "sort of" and "off of":
"We're talking about me right now, and my taking responsibility for my words and actions, and I'm certainly not going to use him to put anything off myself somehow."
