Hating on Authors -- JK Rowling Edition

So, I recently saw a thread on Twitter hating on J.K. Rowling, and then asking, "What other celebrities are dead to you based on what they've said/done"? The thread had over 65 comments ... some of them hating an author for legitimate reasons, others for less legitimate ones. None of this really makes sense to me .... neither for Rowling, who besides her comments on trans people (with which I disagree) is still an charming, liberal, and extremely talent author, nor for other people.

After all, if a writer does well, sure, praise them -- if a writer says wrong, disagree with them? But to "cancel" them? Such self-righteous demands for ideological and moral purity strike me as profoundly unhealthy. It's not a good attitude to take with artists, politicians, family, or friends. Worse, if a writer is suddenly deemed "impure," then they're considered absolutely impure by the denouncers -- and that's what the original Twitter thread was implying. Not a single word of their previously admired work, or writing, or activism has been changed, yet they are deemed irrevocably tainted, without the possibility of nuance or forgiveness or how any divergence from the denouncer's viewpoint can be anything less heretical.

Now, I know the inevitable response: "But writer X has said Y, which causes incredibly harm to Z."

In many cases, though, this "harm" is more abstract than concrete. Still, such claims are often nonetheless made in tones of outrage or indignation ... which is a tricky emotion. Outrage is both rational and irrational ... rational in the sense that you always require reasons for your anger, irrational because it tends to that absolutism that is the very opposite of philosophic thinking.

But even as a reader, a writer's works (or a politician's accomplishments) are largely separate from their biography. Is Curt Schilling any less of a Hall of Fame pitcher because he's a loudmouth asshat? What difference does that make, to anything?

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