There’s no real “rule” here, but simply Maher’s assertion—one that many people won’t sccept in the Time of Demonization—that people can do both good and bad things (it’s better to say that then brand someone as good or evil, though of course people can lean toward one side or another).
This monologue was prompted, of course, by recent revelations that Cesar Chavez was a sexual predator and rapist. Maher mentions others with such ambitendencies, including Thomas Jefferson, Michael Jackson, and Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia who’s particularly vexing.
Maher tries to accept the fact that sometimes the bad comes with the good, and that’s really the only life lesson you can derive from this monologue. But it’s worth pondering. For if you see what happens to people like Chavez, who are written off as too evil to extol in any way, you see the inability of many people to accept nuance (and no, I’m not saying that there should be Cesar Chavez high schools.)
The other guests include Lloyd Blankfein (former CEO of Goldman Sachs), Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted a mere ten days as Trump’s communications director.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that when there is talk about good people with bad behavior, we are quick to mention Thomas Jefferson and a few others. But NOBODY mentions MLK Jr. He was a famous womanizer and plagiarist (the university where he got his doctorate has said that there was a great deal of plagiarism in his dissertation). What are people afraid of? We’ll never get past racism until we can treat all races equally.
The difference is that as far as we know, MLK was a serial adulterer but not a sexual predator. There are rumors that he was present when a woman was raped, and laughed at the attack, but information about that has yet to be released.
I’d say that adultery ranks as less serious than impregnating one’s slave (which exploits power differentials) or than outright rape.
That information has now been released, and King did more than laugh at the rape, he encouraged it:
“David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr., has unearthed information that may forever change King’s legacy.
“In an 8,000-word article published in the British periodical Standpoint Magazine on May 30, 2019, Garrow details the contents of FBI memos he discovered after spending weeks sifting through more than 54,000 documents located on the National Archive’s website. Initially sealed by court order until 2027, the documents ended up being made available in recent months through the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
“The most damaging memos describe King witnessing a rape in a hotel room. Instead of stopping it, handwritten notes in the file say he encouraged the attacker to continue.” (from the journal The Conversation, May 30, 2019)
There is another difference you failed to mention: we’re talking about a difference in time of more than a century and a half. In the world of morality, that has to be taken into account. Furthermore, I am a bit baffled that you do not see King’s affairs as also exploiting power differentials.
Finally, we have to consider not only the above on the negative side, but also the record of plagiarism. You did not address that.
Thomas Jefferson enslaved other human beings. At the age of 50 (or close to it) he engaged in a sexual relation with his wife’s half-sister, who was enslaved to him, Sally Hemmings, who was 14 or 15 at the time. She would eventually bear several children for Jeffereson – all of whom were enslaved by their biological father. On the Monticello plantation, they were treated the same as the rest of the enslaved Africans. Jefferson freed his children after his death but not Sally Hemmings. Their children worked for years to buy their mother’s freedom.
Yeah, that’s the same thing as MLK engaging in extramarital affairs with consenting adult women!!!!!! Joker.
You did not read the Roolz, did you? Your last comment, calling a reader a name (joker) is rude. You could have answered civilly. So either apologize t the peron you insulted or you will not post here any longer. Look at my reply, which is civil.
In point of fact, MLK Jr. apparently went beyond “merely” engaging in extramarital affairs with consenting women. I won’t repeat it all here, but you can see my post (above, I believe) which cites the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of MLK Jr., David Garrow.
Do you have any thoughts on MLK Jr.’s record of plagiarism?
Thank you, Professor Coyne, for posting Maher’s insightful monologue. Perfect people are in very short supply these days.
In Jewish tradition every person has an impulse for bad that emerges at birth, and a good impulse that comes at age 13. I take this quaint idea to mean that mischief and evil are innate. Humans are not “born in sin,” but we do have to work in order to overtake our essential nature.
And so Maher is correct. Jefferson was truly a bad boy. And yes, MLK philandered. But how lucky we are to have had them.
AI informs me that beheadings continue to the present day in Saudi Arabia. To the extent that Maher is disposed to cut Mohammed bin Salman a bit of slack, I trust that he will be similarly charitable to (and take a break from making cute little digs at) those who violate a couple of his world-crisis personal pet peeves: wearing a sweater vest and having an AOL email address.
Pretty much the crux of it.
Hypothetically speaking, if information came to light that a slave actually wanted the sexual relationship – would that change the evaluation?
I know that it is hard to consider, given the power differential. Thus the hurdles to consider such information reliable and free from coercion would be high. But isn’t denying the ability to consent another restriction on the autonomy of self on top of the enslavement of a person?
What if a slave had told peers of a secret love/attraction to a more benevolent master and after the deed had been proud to been chosen? Wouldn’t a verdict of “those was rape regardless” strip the enslaved of this tiny personal freedom? The freedom to internally evaluate what had happened?
Once again I am not saying anything about any particular case. I am merely questioning blanket judgements solely based on the status of the persons involved.
“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
I suppose there is an object lesson in remembering only the bad things the dead have done, perhaps it is a trait that evolution has selected to make us more co-operative with each other. But we don’t have to go along with what evolutionary psychology has suggested to us, and to consider a life in the whole is surely more useful and fairer.
To return to Shakespeare, I suspect we are all like his character Lancelot Gobbo, with an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. Sometimes the difficulty is knowing which is which.
Let me rise in defense of Cesar Chavez. My intent is not to praise what he did while still alive. My intent is only to point out that he has been dead for a long time. He can not defend himself at this point. In my opinion, he should be left alone.