Can You Still Admire Someone's Work While Not Admiring Them as a Person?

One must be able to separate the art from the artist, on some level.

Leni Riefenstahl -- made beautiful films (many of them Nazi propaganda)
Wagner -- anti-Semite, inspiration for above
Bobby Fischer (chess) -- anti-Semite
Shakespeare -- anti-Semite trifecta
Hemingway -- tad racist, in retrospect
Jefferson -- slave rapist
Charles Bukowski -- beat his women
Norman Mailer -- ditto above / history's biggest ego
JD Salinger -- crazy shut-in
Elia Kazan -- named names
John Lennon -- dirty hippie
MLK/JFK/Clinton -- philanderers

One must be able to separate the art from the artist, on some level. One must be a schizophrenic in one's appreciations.

 

Sean Penn - Best American actor of his generation, also the biggest fawking douchebag ever. But ******* that man has an impressive resume.


Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Bad Boys
The Falcon and the Snowman
At Close Range
Colors
Casualties of War
State of Grace
Carlito's Way
Dead Man Walking
U Turn
The Game
The Thin Red Line
Sweet and Lowdown
Mystic River
21 Grams
Milk
Fair Game

 

Rush Limbaugh and Oprah Winfrey. I admire their business sense and success but despise everything else about them.

 

I think you have this one turned around.

By all accounts I've heard he's a great person and a dirty player.

Now Malone... great player, but yeah he was really dirty, plus he's a douche of a person.

 

Danzig. ******* made me pay 165 dollars just to see him play 3 Misfits songs. I got him back by stealing all his music. Love Danzig and Misfits but would never want to meet him.

 

I don't watch Oprah and don't know much about her aside from that she has a talkshow that likes to giveaway random gifts to audiences and filthy rich (according to Jimmy Kimmel).

What about her is despising? I'm seriously interested in knowing.

 

I could not care one single bit about the personal lives of the artists or athletes I admire. I was pretty bummed when Pete Townsend was accused of pedophilia but it didn't stop me enjoying or listening to his music. I was bummed when Cat Stevens signed onto the death warrant for Salmon Rushdie too, but I ain't never gonna quit Cat Stevens. Charles Barkley probably shouldn't have thrown that guy through a window, but dang if it didn't make me like him even more. And I frigging loved it when Metta World Peace ran up into the stands to confront a fan. Dylan has been known to be a major dick, to friends and lovers as well as strangers, and he was also probably in the top 10 artists of the last century.

If somebody went looking for a reason not to like me or to judge something I did badly, they'd have an easy time of it. And probably some people don't see my plays because of that.

I'm not like that. (Unless they have done something really seriously bad to me or a loved one.)

Now. That said, if I find out somebody's an active Republican my respect for them plummets and I would have a hard time enjoying the work of a Republican artist or athlete. We all have our limits. Then again, who is a Republican artist or athlete? I guess Karl Malone used to be an exception but I had ample reason to hate him already.

 

WTF? Those are reasons not to like someone? Wow.

 

Repped. Mostly for calling Sting a woman.

 

Wagner - Huge Racist. One of the greatest orchestrators in the history of music, all be it, a little self indulgent.

Keith Jarrett - Such an ******* that he's been banned from numerous cities across the globe. Also one of the greatest musical geniuses of the last century.

Charlie Parker - Selfish junkie. Largely responsible for the bop language.

Bukowski - Beat his wife.

Miles Davis - pretty big ******* by many accounts. Considered the cubist of music.

Arnold Schoenberg - Very temperamental person. Was said to be a terror at times to be around. Created and perfected the 12 tone method, or serialism.

Jackson Pollack - Said to have an agressive, violent personality.

Off the top of my head. I'm sure I'm still missing a ton.

 

Jimmy Stewart campaigned for Nixon.



Plenty more went before HUAC. Life is full of disappointments.

 

Here you go:

http://www.ranker.com/list/sports-r...es?page=1&format=GRID&sortby=&sortdir=&limit=

Not sure how accurate the list is, but I strongly suspect #1 is.

 

It's discomfiting to read "Bananafish," the perfect crystallization of depression in just a few pages, knowing that the author himself ultimately locked himself in his own bunker to rot for fifty years. That's all I meant. I can't easily admire a person (to say nothing of the artist) who so willingly shuts the world from his eyes.

As to the dirty hippie, that's a joke. I don't admire Lennon as much as many others do. But, yes, I do find the idea of calling a nekkid press conference "Bed-In," from your hotel king size, to solve the world's problems with hunger and war to be an absolute joke, completely out of touch, deserving of ridicule. Lennon was a pompous windbag. Still, to his credit: "Imagine," "more popular than Jesus," etc.

 

I like a lot Guns 'n Roses (the original band) but I heard Axl Rose is a douche and very selfish.

 

Wow. We could not be more different.

I am continually amazed and frankly appalled at how easily people judge the way that others, particularly ones they do not know, live.

Salinger gave us some pretty frigging good books. He doesn't owe us anything else. To judge how he chose to conduct his life? And to judge him for wanting to be private? I just don't get it.

You obviously know a lot more about right and wrong ways to live than I do.

 

I misspoke.

I only ever watch basketball so those were the only athletes I was talking about.

I got to #57 before I saw a name I recognized and that name was David Robinson so even if it's true I didn't respect him to begin with.

 

Most of the real social outcasts get weeded out at work, but about a third of your younger managers or just high-performing co-workers can be fairly selfish or just brazenly dishonest.

 

Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters fame. Probably one of the greatest living song writers alive today. But, this guy is the biggest jackass in the world and often berates and makes fun of the very people who come to see him perform. He makes some of the greatest and most influential music of our time. By the way Sun Kil Moon has a new album out in May.

 

^I booked Red House Painters at a club I lived upstairs at in 1993. I do not remember if anybody in the band was nice or not. Some local Rice U art bands opened. They were always nice. I just thought it was weird to see that band's name again. I don't even remember what they sound like. So next year it will be 20 years since I lived upstairs at a punk club. I am really old.

 

I guess if you have a personal experience with someone you admire it's a little different. Most of the people I admire and have had a chance to hang around with I've found to be really nice and down to earth. But I hung out with David Cross for a few hours and he was pretty unpleasant. And though I've always enjoyed his standup I have to admit I enjoyed it less after spending time with him. And I definitely stopped shoving his CD's in people's faces and saying 'you gotta listen to this' even though "Shut Up You ****ing Baby" is pretty great. It wasn't because he 'did something bad,' but he was rather aggressively unpleasant to be around, the kind of person that makes me say to myself, "Self, remember not to hang out with that guy again. It's just not fun."