Phil Spector's death, I think, exposes the real flaws of the idea that you can't, in good conscience, enjoy the art of abusive men. Because to boycott his music is to boycott the work of his *victims*, from Ronnie Spector to the Ramones.

I've always been skeptical of the idea that one can somehow self-purify by not listening to music from abusive men (or watching their movies or reading their books). It feels like narcissistic self-involvement as a replacement for actual activism.

But the logic falls apart even more when you consider that the "bad men make bad art" attitude tends to only extend to the person who is the face — like Michael Jackson, for instance — and not the person behind the boards.

Anyway, long story short: Listen to what you like. It doesn't make you complicit in abuse. Worry less about your own purity and worry more about systematic justice.

The good news is that Spector actually paid for his crime. One good way to help separate the art from the artist is to make sure artists who commit crimes go to jail, while the art they make can be free.

Ha, exactly. It can get really woolly. Do you know if the cinematographer on a movie you like was a good person? What about the people who made a song sampled in another song? Self-purity as a substitute for activism gets silly fast. https://twitter.com/waspuppet/status/1350859356334645249?s=20

As for folks preening in contempt for those who note Spector's legacy, like, his legacy isn't an opinion. It's simply a fact. His imprint is on most pop music you hear, especially in the MP3 era. Most songs you like would sound very different without him. This is simply fact.

One more thought: I worry that the current pressure to categorize people in black-and-white ways — where they are either all bad or all good — is going to make it very hard to prevent crimes. Because if "predator" is a not a human category, we won't see it when it happens.

One reason it's difficult for a lot of people to accept that a Michael Jackson or a Phil Spector was a predator was that they were under this notion that predatory people are fanged monsters, not artistic geniuses. And so they ignore the warning signs.

When we say "oh that person's musical legacy is worthless now that we know he's a predator", we are reinscribing the notion that "predator" and "artistic genius" are always separate categories — which ends up making it easy for other predators to hide behind their genius.

Believing that evil is a thing done by people and not monsters doesn't get you likes on Twitter, but it is more accurate. And it makes it easier to accept and understand that someone who does stuff you like can also have done stuff that was wrong.

I've also seen this black-and-white thinking lead to victim-blaming, where victims are asked, "Why did you stay in a relationship with the abuser when he was such an evil and fanged monster," as if they were stupid.

The answer is that abusers aren't evil and fanged monsters, but people. And sometimes they have attractive qualities that lead their victims to be reluctant to leave. We should empathize with that, which requires accepting that bad people are still people.