The Disappointers

I think the one that finally got me was Rolf Harris. I had loved him so much as a child, and he just never seemed weird or creepy like the loathesome Savile (obvious danger signals even for me when I was very little), Jonathan King (hard to engage with) or Gary Glitter (just damn weird). 

Harris was proof of just how a narcissistic personality can convince people that they are innocent and cuddly, when in fact they are nothing like that at all.

Alongside all the rest of things wonderful and terrible that life brings, there is a skinny timeline of disappointers. 

No more Woody Allen films, for instance. Formerly cuddly public figures who were not who they seemed to be narrow the focus, just as much as tax-avoiding (AKA criminal) businesses who have to be boycotted, or arms/fossil fuel funders who have to be turned away from. 

A former favourite author saw their books thrown into the recycling bin because I felt they needed to be taken out of circulation. An antisemitic musician now longer tempts me to tap my feet, and another at the other end of the scale makes me turn off the radio.

I think one of the problems might be the feeling of people who have become famous in a particular walk of life that that they are wise, invincible and beyond criticism. Gradually, I'm coming to realise that there's an element of mental illness associated with great fame; such people become isolated from reality, and develop a sense of entitlement to explain just why they should act or speak in a certain way.

What are rules except to be broken? Personal ethics and compassion feel like self-imposed restraints that need to be discarded. 'Their public' will surely agree with them, wherever they go on their 'journey'. 

Every time another one bubbles up to the surface, I inwardly groan. It could be a seedy revelation, it could be a pompous pronouncement that they expect everyone to agree with. I'm so disappointed sometimes.