You could replace “entertainers” in your statement with just about any word for an occupation and it would remain true.
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Look what a shithead I am! Edgy! Let’s talk about me!
Free advertising. I wouldn’t let you in my home in 3D - why would I do so more virtually.
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Look, I’m in middle age now, and I don’t have time to spend on shitty humans making shitty culture that does not spark joy! Why listen to Dave Chapelle making unfunny and cruel jokes at the expense of trans folks when I can actually laugh at the targeted barbs of Hannah Gadsby…
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It reminds me a bit of that Beau video posted in comments recently about the guy who was upset about not having a white founding father to identify with.
And Beau saying- ask yourself- why do you want to identify with the villains? Why must you identify with and try to salvage these entertainers in the absence of any growth on their parts?
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Yep. We’re (meaning anyone who isn’t a cisgendered, straight white dude) constantly told that we should all identify with heroic white men, but that cisgendered straight white dudes don’t need to identify with heroes who do not look like them. It’s part of what made some have a meltdown over the Doctor being played by a woman…
Some are so used to the hero always looking like them, that they can’t wrap their head around identifying with others… meanwhile, the rest of us are expected to look up to and identify with white dudes, too.
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Also tends to overlook the fact that a lot of people’s asshole tendencies are loud and clear in their work. So why should I force myself to pretend to enjoy it and find it edifying?
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Totally. Not to get too off topic, but when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird as a kid, I just assumed Scout was a boy. I remember being shocked when it first became clear that she was a girl, like me. Wonder what that was all about.
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Yeah, sadly, it’s that ingrained misogyny we’re all raised with…
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I think I was just so used to the protagonists and/or narrators in our required reading being male. It was the ‘80s. I can probably count on one hand the number of books we had to read that had a female lead. And that’s including Charlotte’s Web.
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You probably didn’t get assigned books like the Ramona books in class… we weren’t, but I loved those books as a kid.
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Me, too! Those were my “fun” reading. Remember when she put the burdock crown on her head?
And, different books, but we did get Judy Blume to come speak at our school, so it wasn’t all bad.
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The one I remember most was when she tried to get her dad to stop smoking…
Obligatory…
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OMG, apologies for the derail, but I totally tried that on my own mom. Where she replaces his cigarettes with rolled up pieces of paper with messages of why he should quit?
Did not go over well at home. 
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OMG! I bet…
Yeah, sorry for the derail, all… but, who doesn’t love Ramona Quimby!
The thing that is amazing to me, is that the books were originally written in the 50s and still were relevant right up to today.
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Great point. There was a nuanced take on Eric Clapton:
Basically, he’s gonna die soon(ish), the one thing he loves most is playing guitar for an audience, so he kinda lost his 
on COVID because it took the thing he loves most away from him. Doesn’t make it right, but it does explain why…
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I bet to this day if you asked someone on first meeting them “Who is this Nosmo? Nosmo King?” You’d get so many people’s eyes to light up.
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So the WAPO isn’t considering his multiple in concert racist rants as “political?”
Because by my math, 2021 - 56 is 1966 and Clapton was spewing shit about black people well into the 1980s.
That’s not a nuanced take, that’s normalizing racism.
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In the article there’s some detail, including his close relationship with Robert Cray. Again, not defending the behavior in any way, but the “why” part outlined in the article helped me understand… rather than just going “oh this person is broken” and binning them.
To me, that’s the goal of discussion. Not to agree or disagree (good luck on all that), but to discover new layers of nuance and gain a deeper understanding of the issues involved.
I’m not sure that the issues around the pandemic are in question or that additional nuance would change the fact that disinformation was being promoted - and that disinformation harmed people.
And sure - I guess it’s sorta nice that he had a black friend?
Has he changed his views? Does he still promote factually false information that could literally kill people.
The fact that he had something personal to gain from promoting dangerous behavior is, if anything, more incriminating. Not exculpatory.
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What we CAN say, though, is that artists who DO become well known do so not ONLY because of their talent in whatever their art is, but because they were successfully marketed.
Picasso was a genius. Also a monster. Also REALLY good at promoting himself. So he got a be a rich and famous artist while he lived.
Van Gogh was also a genius. He seemed to be a very ill, unhappy man, and was fucking TERRIBLE at promoting himself or anythign resembling the public facing side of an artistic career. His work didn’t become truly famous until after his death, after relatives WERE able to successfully market him.
Maybe it’s not that being an asshole is necessary to be a great artist, but that a capitalistic model rewards the sociopathic and punishes the consciencous, so the only artists who become well known and successful are those who are both talented and, to the degree necessary, amoral.
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