Respectable artists my <ahem>

[Karen Newcombe <kln@staralliance.com>]

>Eric Clapton? Didn't he sleep with the wife of one of his best friends
>(George Harrison)? Isn't that what Layla's about? Isn't this guy a multiple
>time drug addict?
>
>That's straight down the line? You have respect for him as a person?
>
>He was a great guitarist with some real imagination, but those days are
>long gone.

The truth is that being a talented, highly recognized artist does not mean
you are a likeable, all-around joe.  Many great painters, writers, poets,
musicians, singers are notoriously crotchety, unpleasant, have bad personal
habits, and some few of them are just not very nice people.

"Respecting someone as a person" does not has one bloody iota of anything
to do with how or why I might appreciate their work.  

I have immense appreciation for the brilliant works of Herodotus, Sappho,
the scribes who wrote down the Song of Solomon and the Psalms, but we'll
never know a thing about their personal lives, and it doesn't matter at all.

Karen  kln@staralliance.com