hmm.. I hope I never find myself completely immersed in the "celebrity" over reason or basic human principles culture, which is so common in America and so scary in this particular year. A lot of things have happened in history, we revisit and refer to them on a daily basis, still talk about them 1,000 years later.. I guess all of these events had some "correct" element to them because we talk about them!
The fact that some people are still critical, not nodding just because a long filmography/fame/"hollywood icon!" is too irresistible and can still criticize the endorsement of hate speech, it does not make the latter right and it says little about the merit of said speech ("freedom of speech" of course, to whoever understands freedom as "saying whatever I want" and no responsibilities or sense of the limit being where the next person's freedom begins).. it only speaks about the person still stimulating that ability (criticism).
His movies always felt too full of clichés and too Hollywood for me.. they never spoke to me so I don't feel torn about it. It would be great, though, if people like him could stick to sharing the amount of technical brilliance and memories he must've accumulated over the years.. might contribute more to society than sharing the creative ways bigotry has scarred him inside out.
Why hold these kinds of men up on a pedestal as something to be idolized? I don't care how venerated you are as an actor or a photographer. There are plenty of other great subjects out there who haven't raped women or co-signed on a human-sized tangerine's racist comments.
