Note: This is probably an essay designed for everyone to hate equally, but I felt compelled. What am I to do in response to the madness I see? I write. So here goes…Thanks to Julie for the edits—Ya did great,, kiddo...
I’m a bad person. No, really. If I were to open the world’s compasses of moralism, I wouldn’t make the grade on any level—not by any religious, civic, or national yardstick. Guess what? Neither would you. Nor would any of us, which is why I have been shouting to anyone who would listen since late 2016 to use their outrage effectively and eloquently rather than throwing stones at people who do awful things (even celebrities, who are broken people, just like me and you) because one day, boomerang-wise, something you said, something you did, will come back to bite you square in the patoot and you may be the next to be jettisoned from society.
This subject came up for me again (nearly a decade of this is exhausting) while I was scrolling through my Facebook feed doing what you all do—seeing who gained weight, who lost, who finally got married, who divorced, and—during a politically charged year—to see who I should unfollow so I don’t have to listen to the mewling, puking wretches of either so-called progressives or so-called conservatives. I feel a bit of Allen Ginsberg in his opening lines of “Howl” where I see direct and irreversible proof that these words are as true of my time as they were of his:
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…”
One of my Facebook “friends,” someone who I was very close to in elementary school, has grown up to be one of the allegedly do-gooding Spanish Inquisitors of our age—making sure all undesirables get the rack regardless of sometimes complicated cases where one doesn’t have to do much research to raise a stink; instead, they simply don’t read any other side of a situation than their own—typically in the guise of fighting for allegedly (and really) oppressed members of our society.
She shared a post from Francesco Marciuliano, the creator of the syndicated comics Sally Forth and Judge Parker, commenting on the recent fracas over the alleged exploits of British author Neil Gaiman who, I will admit I’ve never read, but I’ve been aware millions of people are both enlightened and moved by his work. Marciuliano wrote, “No, you don’t have to separate the artist from their work. That’s a bull**** line used to excuse the monstrous. Or to put it another way, I’m not reading The Sandman and I’m not missing out at all.” Boy, I hope Francesco has no skeletons in his closet.
"No, you don't have to separate the artist from their work. That's a bull**** line used to excuse the monstrous."
This quote is a curious and almost unbelievably dumb remark from someone who, apparently, earns their living by writing. On the one hand, it is true: one does not have to separate the artist from their work. You actually can go on living, take that stance, and throw out classical writers such as Lewis Carroll and Louisa May Alcott and contemporaries like Orson Scott Card and J. K. Rowling because they are evil and you are supporting their platforms.
Now, let’s sally forth into his second sentence. I can almost assure you, God as my witness, that the first person who said, “I choose to separate the art from the artist” never had it in mind in any sense to excuse monstrous behavior, but then again, it is also not everyone’s prerogative to be the judge of everybody else simply because you have cut your own cloth to fit the times’ fashions (which are nefarious, if you haven’t noticed).
On this blog, I have come to the defense of two artists for whom the question of the art and the artist are complex and deserve attention. I defended opera composer Richard Wagner, arguing the beauty and sheer vision of works like The Ring of the Nibelung and Tristan and Isolde outweigh a man who shared the antisemitic feelings of the vast majority of his countryfolk. How could he not? German literature is not founded on Martin Luther, but his work and thoughts pervaded that culture for many years and, though Luther himself did a noble thing by giving the Scriptures back to the believers, he also spent the last years of his life choking on the vitriol he spewed at his Jewish brothers and sisters. You can read the article here if you wish to see if I successfully showed how one can have two, separate thoughts at one time and not lose sleep over it.
That—accepting two or more separate truths coexisting in one’s mind and yet choosing not to ditch what was great because there was something rotten in the state of Nuremberg—to me, denotes intelligence. I could have written an essay in which I spent more time mourning Wagner’s horrible antisemitism and there would have been much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, but the effect would be a fart bubble in the air. I don’t want to write or talk like everyone else, and I most certainly do not wish to show everyone how good I am, because I’m not. Most of the whiners who do such things actually enjoy the smell of their own brand and South Park did an excellent job sending up such do-gooding chappies in their episode “Smug Alert!”
I have also defended Woody Allen due to overhearing an actual conversation between Mia Farrow and some actors in New York many years ago in which she admitted she implanted a false memory in Dylan Farrow’s head that in itself has been an act of more horrific abuse to her daughter than if she actually had been sexually abused in the way she has described (the timeline never works, so it’s fruitless to examine her “memory”). This latter essay enjoyed some heavy traffic on the site, but no one really took me to task except privately and, even then, they were offering a sensible suggestion on how to soften my tone regarding survivors of abuse who, unfortunately, are very much among us. [I should note here I have as much pity and respect for victims of actual crimes as any sensible human being; it seems stupid to say that, but I suppose you must in 2025]. To me, these two essays encapsulate my thoughts rather well and are even more quaintly written than this piece so as not to hurt too many grown-up baby’s feelings. But that softening is out in this essay, I’m afraid.
"I should note here I have as much pity and respect for victims of actual crimes as any sensible human being; it seems stupid to say that, but I suppose you must in 2025."
It’s alright if people call me an angry white man. I am. But I’m not angry because I think white people are being criticized. In fact, in my prose-poem “Not I But Also,” I criticized Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, and other white women who high-jacked the Me Too movement, which was intended for women of color. By the time Taylor Swift booted Garrison Keillor off her precious radio and Aziz Ansari had to apologize for absolutely nothing, the Me Too movement became, to me, another lily white, blinkered feminist cause that continues to steer attention away from victimized women of color (Bill Burr did a spot-on job with this on Saturday Night Live a few years ago as well). It could have been noble and some of the voices were noble and genuine and heartbreaking, but with Cosby out of prison and the Time’s Up board being dismantled because they were lining their own pockets instead of helping victims proves to me what was good of Me Too came to nothing.
Finally, we come to Marciuliano’s last sentence: “I’m not reading The Sandman and I’m not missing out at all.” I hate to bring a little country wisdom to the proceedings as well as intellectual argument, but how would he know if he were missing out on anything? And, in addition to this, how would we know what great novels Sherman Alexie could have continued writing? How would we know what remarkable acting Kevin Spacey could still be giving us? Despite their flaws (and they—and we—all have many), these are people we are unlikely to ever hear from again. And the claimants against them? Yes, they have a voice now except, in the case of everyone I’ve mentioned so far in this piece, some have been proven false, faulty, and/or jumping on a bandwagon. Worse yet, in the case of Harvey Weinstein (who most certainly did deserve everything he got), many of the named and anonymous victims waited until their NDAs expired to finally point out the injustice. One could argue he was too powerful for anyone to tell the story beforehand, but do we actually know that? What if someone had said something earlier, maybe one of those “good men” who worked for him? If you think this view could only be uttered by a man, check out Germaine Greer and Camille Paglia, two of the greatest (if polarizing) feminist writers, now shamed by their “sisters.”
This “cancel culture” (really, “cult”) has ruled the roost for nearly ten years now and there are apparently those who just can’t let it go. Again, this is not to say those victimized shouldn’t be free to speak about their experiences, but I can only focus on that concept of “separating the art from the artist” because folks’ refusal to try or even think about such matters with complexity is a thing of the past. So, that led me to this academic exercise, extolling the virtues of independent and complex thinking among those of us who are not straddled to a relatively few smart-sounding English words like toxic, inclusivity, and intersectionality that give one an air of intelligence where none can be found.
In the Wagner essay (a kind of written response to Stephen Fry’s brilliant documentary Wagner and Me), I ended up siding with one scholar who could know and understand on the one hand that Wagner was a great artist and, on the other hand, that he was as all of us are, a broken and pitiful human being. It is not so much that madness is associated with genius (although that happens), it’s that no matter how far any of us climb, we’re just folks who are prone to the biases of the ages in which we are born. This scholar knew how to think—giving serious weight to two opposite ideas and allowing them to live in his mental universe, side by side. He did not, in the end, as so many of my generation and younger do, spat out “do-gooding” hate to be on the side of the au current sexual hysteria du jour. Read your history—America has a sex crisis every thirty years or so. In the early 90s, there was something called political correctness, and it was kind of a latent HIV-like virus ready to jumpstart. Today, that has metastasized into full-blown AIDS (Asinine Individuals Dumbing Society, if you like). These are the same folks who think listening to Wagner commits violence against Jews or words kill more powerfully than a semi-automatic.
As the final nail in my coffin, I offer Scripture. As a Christian, which I suppose is my only label (my generation used to detest labels and now screams, “You better get my label right or I’ll destroy you!!!”), I can only go to what represents morality to me. And, if you’re going to go off on a long tangent about how the Bible is full of rotten, horrible things—go for it. It is the single most misread and misunderstood book in the world. Read Rob Bell’s What is the Bible? or, if you want to do some serious reading, read the actual books as separate works by multiple authors in specific contexts and then come back and we’ll tussle.
Here's Proverbs 6:16-19 in the New Living Translation, an immensely readable equivalency translation:
“There are six things the LORD hates—
no, seven things he detests:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that kill the innocent,
a heart that plots evil,
feet that race to do wrong,
a false witness who pours out lies,
a person who sows discord in a
family.”
Now, why this verse and about this topic? Because it encapsulates both the ribald, voluminous evil men and women do (the Weinsteins, the Asia Argentos, the Danny Mastersons, the Brett Ratners, the R. Kellys) and their eager imprisoners. It seems appropriate that the first thing God hates, or detests, is haughty eyes. What is haughtiness? An old-fashioned word that conjures to the mind images of looking down your nose at others, using condescending speech, holier-than-thou-ness in essence. These are the eyes of those who have had no more of assault of women (as if, unfortunately, that ever will stop), who have had no more of legal red tape (though, if they paid attention to the law, Cosby would still be in jail, so they kind of shot their wad in that instance), who can stand society’s ills no more!
I pity these people because, to me, people are people. All equally broken, all equally capable of goodness and evil. Hypocritical is a good word for these folks. These people do often have lying tongues/false witness or cannot accept apologies or forgive people who have served their time (the cases of Michael Jackson, Roman Polanski, Luc Besson, Louis CK, Anthony Anderson, David O. Russell, Garth Brooks, Christian Bale, Al Franken, Marlon Brando, James Franco, William Hurt, Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Russell Crowe, Alexander Payne, Gary Oldman, Michael Fassbender, David Hamilton, Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Johnny Depp, Jeffrey Tambor, Charlie Rose, Elie Wiesel, Harold Bloom, Bernardo Bertolucci, Nicholas Cage, I could go on, but you get my drift).
As for those who hurt the innocent, plot evil, race to do wrong, they have their comeuppance too: Sean Combs, Chris Brown, Ron Jeremy, Armie Hammer, Ansel Elgort, Scott Rudin, Mel Gibson, T. I., Bryan Singer, James Brown, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Joss Whedon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gene Simmons, Mickey Rourke, Ozzy Osbourne, Richard Pryor, Steven Seagal, Robin Thicke…You actually could get lost in both these lists because some were charged, some were not, some were guilty, some were innocent, some were products of the late-60s-early-70s (not a squalid argument—there was once an actual but failed attempt at true sexual liberation in this country), some are alive and some are dead. They are, save a few, all men, though, and a shocking number of Jewish people too—perpetual scapegoats during “inquisitions.” And, getting back to the central theme, there are people on both lists whose work I admire while not admiring them and admire them without liking their work and every complicated issue in-between).
But, as for Proverbs, that last verse—“a person who sows discord in a family”—that is to all of us in this mess of a situation. The human family is a family. We are more enamored of our so-called communities now (though there is no such thing as no one ethnic or social group thinks alike and never will), but we are still a family. The saints and the sinners, the birth-givers and the murderers. Some people do deserve to be removed from our society, but we are still all humans and fall short of (sometimes) any glory.
I leave you with two stanzas from a hymn that has become more and more popular nowadays in mainstream churches, “For Everyone Born, A Place at the Table.” Written in the mid-90s by Shirley Erena Murray, it is now in a baker’s dozen of denominational hymnbooks.
“For everyone born,
a place at the table,
for everyone born,
clean water and bread,
a shelter, a space,
a safe place for growing,
for everyone born,
a star overhead.”
A beautiful sentiment. But one stanza you might not find so beautiful appears in verse 4. Let it melt in your mouth a moment:
“For just and unjust,
a place at the table,
abuser, abused,
with need to forgive,
in anger, in hurt,
a mindset of mercy,
for just and unjust,
a new way to live.”
The emphasis, of course, was added.
For every overprivileged adolescent (in our country, the ages of 11 through 39) who’s ever posted about speaking “truth to power” should sing this. Daily. Do the protestors of today have something to teach us? Yes, it is not that I don’t wish to grow or learn myself, but there is a point when someone of a mature age should put their foot down and help people realize that the protestors of today are so dissimilar from the protestors of the late 1960s that they might as well come from different dimensions in space.
For everyone born, less talk and more compassion. That goes for Me Too and (me too).
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