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Well, my view is that when we have certain representative varieties of sin which are extraordinarily common among the capital-G Carlyle-esque Great, one faces a choice: to beatify the sin itself as part and parcel of greatness, to minimize it as unrelated to greatness and irrelevant, or to reject the greatness of the individual to achieve moral purity. Each is appropriate in certain cases.
It's not that mainstream to see people say "All my heroes cheated on their spouses, so I should cheat on my spouse" or "all the founding fathers were racist so guess I am too" though I suppose it happens on the margins. But we certainly see it in hustle culture and capitalism: my heroes don't sleep enough so I don't sleep enough, my heroes ignore their personal lives so I ignore my family. And we see it with artists, especially art-student poseurs: all the great artists were drug addicts so I'll take drugs irresponsibly, all the great artists had messy personal lives so I will mistreat my romantic partners, all the great artists were vague and inscrutable so I will be unfriendly and weird.
Minimizing it used to be the mainstream position, but has been decried in recent years, when no man is a hero to his valet but we all must read the valet's tell-all. I tend to think this is the best option, that it creates myths is good, myths give us something to live up to. I think the apocryphal stories of Robert E Lee giving up his seat on the train to a poor elderly negress are good for anti-racism, they allow for those who idolize Lee to be rehabilitated into the mainstream of society, they allow for the mainstream of society to embrace a brilliant general, they create a narrative in which hatred of Blacks is not the core of American identity etc. The progressive urge to tar Lee as a racist is a net negative for the cause of anti-racism, it drives off as many as it brings in.
The third is the common progressive metoo battle cry. I find it lacking. There are simply too many monsters in history, to remove them leaves our literature and our myths gap-toothed. It is too Stalinist to un-person someone for any sin. We can acknowledge the sins and still watch the film.
This is the one my original post attempted to zero in on.
Bingo.
I don't think I can add anything more, so I'll leave you with this excellent additional example - "Until you can win 20 in the show, it means your a slob". "Until you've written Ulysses you're just a drunk, masturbating Irishman."
That is truly one of the greatest films of all time, yet it is so unrelentingly weird. I remember that every time I watch it.
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