While listening to a recent episode of The Skeptic Zone podcast, I heard a familiar question: how do you react when an artist, whose work you enjoy, turns out to be a kook?

The next day, I saw James Brown wins this week’s Roman Polanski award for “great art being created by really bad people.” article at the Lawyers, Guns, and Money blog. I thought it was interesting in that the Roman Polanski comparison was exactly what I had thought of. At work I was once discussing great movies with a couple of colleagues. I asked one individual his thoughts on “The Shawshank Redemption.” He said he “used to like it, until Tim Robbins …” and went on to claim some sort of treasonous statement or other had been made by the actor. Up to that point, it hadn’t really occurred to me that people would judge art based on their feelings about the artists. It may be news to some people, but many great actors, directors, designers, architects, athletes, etc. are terrible people. How, though, is that an issue.

I recalled having read about the “Piss Christ.” At the time, I felt like it was absurd in that it wasn’t artistic. The only emotion it evoked was in the form of outrage that depended critically on the viewer knowing the yellow color was from urine. I thought it was every bit as artistic as a teenager defecating on someone’s car.

My answer to the original question is that good art (a good performance, etc.) should only be judged on its own merits.

One of my favorite reads lately is former Bush speechwriter David Frum. Today he linked to a John Oliver bit from the Daily Show. It was insightful and painful to tears. It was every bit as biting as A Modest Proposal.

Part 1

Part 2

Interestingly, Frum makes some points against Oliver’s presentation that are worth a second look. Nevertheless, I am glad that he gave me the opportunity to review Oliver’s presentation. I’m not sure I necessarily forgive Frum for adding “Axis of Evil” to the American lexicon, but I do appreciate that he is willing to link to things of which he disapproves. I mean that sincerely. For being a big jerk, David Frum seems to be a pretty good guy. I also appreciate that his spelling and grammar are generally correct. It’s possible that that is owed more to an editor, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Sometimes when I fear for the lost art of political commentary, the Daily Show provides relief.

From Charles Pierce at Esquire:

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wants to be your vice-president. (He may also want to be your president, too, but being your vice-president first is an easy way to do that.) His first audition for the second slot was to become the prime surrogate for the relentless juggernaut that was the Rick Perry campaign.

(This was a juggernaut only in the sense that people watched Perry speak in the debates and asked each other, “Is he hitting the jug or not?” Thank you. I’ll be back for the late show.)

Browsing Cracked, as I am wont to do, I found this article by David Wong: 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying. In it, Wong does a better job than I have done historically in explaining one point in particular:

… “anyone can get rich” isn’t just untrue, it’s insultingly untrue. You can’t have a society where everyone is an investment banker. And you can’t have a society where you pay six figures to every good policeman, nurse, firefighter, schoolteacher, carpenter, electrician and all of the other ten thousand professions that civilization needs to survive (and that rich people need in order to stay rich).

It’s like setting a jar of moonshine on the floor of a boxcar full of 10 hobos and saying, “Now fight for it!” Sure, in the bloody aftermath you can say to each of the losers, “Hey, you could have had it if you’d fought harder!” and that’s true on an individual level. But not collectively — you knew goddamned well that nine hobos weren’t getting any hooch that night. So why are you acting like it’s their fault that only one of them is drunk?

A great number of different kinds of people are necessary to have a functioning society. To say that someone whose job has an immediate and demonstrable result (say, a paramedic) is of less value to society than someone who manages a hedge fund is patently absurd. The money that is being manipulated by the hedge fund manager is meaningless outside the framework of a functioning society. As such, he should appreciate the interconnectedness of the world. Preferably without being a jerk about it.

From the book Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success by Matthew Syed, I got turned on to Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. Her thesis is that we have two basic mindsets that she calls “fixed” and “growth.” I am always a little leery about binary divisions, particularly in something as complex as human psychology. Nevertheless, I find much of what she says very compelling. Dweck’s so-called “growth” mindset leaves individuals open to expansion and promotes the idea of hard work. The “fixed” mindset, on the other hand, is characterized by a reliance on real or perceived talent. In a variety of experiments covering a broad range of tasks, an obvious pattern emerged. Subjects who were led to believe they were particularly talented underperformed thereafter, while subjects complimented on the amount of effort they had put in tended to overperform.

As I was reading through right-wing nuttery lately (I have odd hobbies), I hit on a sort of epiphany. I wonder to what extent Dweck’s “mindset” idea explains our current national character. Where most of the developed world was left devastated by the end of World War II, the United States was relatively unscathed. I think few would doubt the worth of the generation of Americans that survived the Great Depression and emerged from the second World War an economic juggernaut. Those who grew up in the post-war years, however, embraced the concept of American exceptionalism. The baby boomers have made this country into that coddled brat who has been told of his greatness since childhood. Meanwhile, the real assets of this nation are forgotten. Disagree? Who listens to Rush Limbaugh and, in the 21st century, is still frightened of “socialism,” women, and dark people? I rest my case.