<p>TheDad: I guess somethings I just don’t want to know. Call me an idealist. I found myself thinking about all this while I walked the dogs this AM. I don’t feel it enriches my life to know that JFK screwed around (Johnson too), and I’d just as soon not know what Clinton did with Monica. While I don’t want to support athletes who cheat (and have been dismayed at the recent blood doping scandals in pro cycling), I also feel that they should be entitled to private lives. I guess I make a distinction between private and public lives. In the case here, I expressed my dismay that a middle-aged writer could grab and kiss an unwilling 16-year-old girl (although I wouldn’t call Asimov a pedophile)–and thereby brought his private life into his public arena.</p>
<p>dmd, you reminded me of one simulation in my history class where we did the trial of FDR – good or bad president? In any case, on the prosecuting side, one guy was a surprise witness as “FDR’s mistress,” frilly dress and all. It was just the funniest thing.</p>
<p>Memory aside, whether or not FDR was a good president shouldn’t be based on his bedside manners- while I go FAR from supporting cheating in a marriage, I think that one is completely different and even irrelevant to the other. Like the example: whether or not FDR cheated on his wife is not relevant to whether or not he is a good president. I mean, he is regarded as one of America’s best leaders in history. How he dealt with the ending of the Great Depression and the beginnings of the Cold War VS. how he dealt with his sex/marital life seem like polar opposites. But that’s just me. I have a tendency to separate a lot of things.
PS- Fwiw, I like FDR. Sure, I think his handling of his home life to be ■■■■■■■-worthy…but hey, he made a good start on the road to recovery.</p>
<p>but you know if you say God forgave you , all is well ;)</p>
<p>I’m sorry but I refuse to give Michael Vick and his sick dog torture antics a private life pass.</p>
<p>You know, doubleplay, you have a valid point… private lives have to be consensual, I think, for them to be private. </p>
<p>And TalkTHT, I could make the argument that the investigation into CLinton’s private life affected his public presidency…</p>
<p>That implies that his private life became public. Before that, his private life was private. I guess it really depends on your definition of “public” and “private.” I’m just looking for the separation between both scopes, but I guess you’re looking at “public” and “private” as more interconnected…</p>
<p>Please don’t turn a perfectly nice science fiction author thread into politics, OK? There are plenty of threads for that already. Search on “clinton” to get you started.</p>
<p>DP, I don’t condone Michael Vick’s dog-fighting and abuse at all. But a sense of proportion is called for: if a great artist were also a mass-murderer, that would certainly cast a pall on appreciating his or her work. But lechery? Common garden-variety adultery? Smoking marijuna? Picking one’s nose? Practicing open and notorious omphaloskepsis during Lent? Perambulating a neighbor’s child while wearing a dress? Voting Republican? Wasting hours of one’s life posting on CC?</p>
<p>There’s something seriously amiss when we demand that all our heroes, or even those we merely admire, be paragons of virtue, meeting a long litmus test of conditions before receiving our approval. </p>
<p>As for sports figures, I expect very little of or from them in the first place.</p>
<p>If Isaac Asimov had kissed me instead of shaking my hand when I was 16 that would have recommended him to me.</p>
<p>I seem to want to say that I believe in the idea of muse or inspiration. We don’t really know where art comes from. Odious people have created wonderful art that I would not want to deny myself. Half of Western culture has been created by anti-semites. I aill not deny myself the closing measure of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE for any reason.</p>
<p>Hemingway may come across as a macho misogynist but his short stories beautifully critique this position, and his sentences are great models for students. I have taken plenty of heat from female and male “feminists” for including him on my syllabi.</p>
<p>I have been a great fan of Isaac Asimov since I read the short story collection “Nine tomorrows” at the age of 12. I have probably read almost everything he wrote–he is one of my heroes–not diminshed by dmd’s story. I can’t think of him as a pedophile, more like the product of a different age in sensitivities about gender relationships, women’s issues, allowable social boundaries. I imagine his kiss in this instance to have been avuncular-flirtatious, like calling attractive young women or even girls “sweetheart”. That being said, he did divorce an older less attractive wife, for a younger more attractive one-- although second wife was also an intellectual peer. A remarkable man of wit, imagination and vision–but not without human flaws.</p>
<p>I certainly never meant to portray Asimov as a pedophile. A lecher, yes. It turned me off him and off his books (it was a sloppy kiss, and unwelcome). I was disappointed to find him so repugnant, especially after having just listened to him speak–with great humor and very well–for over an hour. It was a lesson for me of sorts in the difference between knowing someone from a distance and knowing too much about someone. I found it distressing at the time (and just as distressing were my parents, who did not take my complaints about the (few) lechers among their friends seriously either), and I find it distressing now. It is not fun to be grabbed and kissed against your will.</p>