This goes to a point that I've discussed quite a bit with friends and family: to what extent do we separate the art from the artist?
At the one extreme, we wind up insisting to know all about the moral character and personal history of every author, director, actor, painter ... and so on. In fact, why stop with artists? It becomes absurd. It gets to the point where you don't trust anyone outside your own little church, and mistrust most within.
At the other extreme, we wind up permitting books filled with hate, images that deliberately lie, and so on.
I'm not even sure there are only two extremes (I shy away from swinging pendulums and all other implications of a truth that lies between; truth is quicksilver). But this case with Ed McDonald shows how vulnerable we all are to a campaign of lies.
It's not unprecedented. People have used radio and newspapers. They've manipulated mass media. Before that, there was the gossip that could ruined lives as painfully delineated by 19thc authors. Because this is a new form, we haven't got it figured yet. Heck, I'm not sure we've got gossip figured.
But this business of condemning the artist because of something in their personal life, or their personal beliefs, and then using the power of social media to ruin them financially, it really does have me going. I carom all over the place, not between various opinions but more like trying to get my arms around the question. I certainly don't have any answers, though I keep trying them on, like clothes in the fitting room.
Meanwhile, the unlucky few have to deal with the question on a practical level. Mr McDonald can count himself lucky, I suppose, in that the allegations have been driven out from the very places they were planted. One hopes the attacker(s) will be identified, lest they come back from another angle.
I do wish the open letter had provided a few specifics. Even something like "search on Reddit" or some such. I really had to work at it to find out even the bare facts. The letter as it stands reads something along the lines of "there's this guy, and this bad thing happened, and it was done by some other guy or guys, and ain't it awful". It brought to mind ScarletBea's observations about how we all live in a bubble. Evidently I don't live in the same bubble as Mr Mathews.
The times we live in.
