Your Fave is Problematic

Hey, y'all, I know we usually use this thread for reports of problematic behavior of musicians and celebrities and I really hate to report on one of our own....but it looks like the type of problematic behavior we often talk about here has reached our N&G family. I feel compelled to share what I've discovered:

I'm fucked—I love mooning my friends and family!
 
Hey, y'all, I know we usually use this thread for reports of problematic behavior of musicians and celebrities and I really hate to report on one of our own....but it looks like the type of problematic behavior we often talk about here has reached our N&G family. I feel compelled to share what I've discovered:
I don’t think plumber’s crack counts.
 
Hey, y'all, I know we usually use this thread for reports of problematic behavior of musicians and celebrities and I really hate to report on one of our own....but it looks like the type of problematic behavior we often talk about here has reached our N&G family. I feel compelled to share what I've discovered:
I always knew there was something off. You can’t listen to that much Sun Ra without … issues.
 
Hey, y'all, I know we usually use this thread for reports of problematic behavior of musicians and celebrities and I really hate to report on one of our own....but it looks like the type of problematic behavior we often talk about here has reached our N&G family. I feel compelled to share what I've discovered:
Don't you first have to be a "fave" to make it here?
 
This is paywalled, so I can't tell how much the article calls out how gross this is, but the headline and blurb make it scads grosser:

eta: found an archived version; it's even worse than the headline. I can't believe I'm reading this shit in 2024.
 
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This is paywalled, so I can't tell how much the article calls out how gross this is, but the headline and blurb make it scads grosser:

eta: found an archived version; it's even worse than the headline. I can't believe I'm reading this shit in 2024.
Only about halfway through the article so far, but separate from the revelations about McCarthy, it's one of the most bizarre pieces I've ever read in a major English-language magazine. Like, the writer is clearly so blinded by his love for McCarthy's work—and maybe enamoured by the charms of his subject?—that he can't grapple with the implications of any of this substantively, can he? It's fanfic.

"That’s the muse for you, full of equine wisdom, horse sense. And while she certainly has a way with words, words also have a way with her, as McCarthy found out in 1976. As do landscapes. Behind her, framed between the posts of Scout’s stall, the Catalina Mountains loom burnt green, brushed upward with the impressionistic confidence of a child’s paint stroke. Britt stands poised at the picture’s edge like a foreground that has leaked out of its frame, at play between painting and outer world, portrait and subject."

What am I reading
 
Only about halfway through the article so far, but separate from the revelations about McCarthy, it's one of the most bizarre pieces I've ever read in a major English-language magazine. Like, the writer is clearly so blinded by his love for McCarthy's work—and maybe enamoured by the charms of his subject?—that he can't grapple with the implications of any of this substantively, can he? It's fanfic.
Yes! I'm deeply squicked out by the authorial voice here. He seems swept up by the idea that she (and possibly McCarthy) read his substack and is too excited by proximity to a Great Man to recognize the SA survivor in front of him.

Another wrinkle: some seem to speculate the subject is a grifter and the author has been taken for a ride. Namely the detail of her seeing his photo on a paperback copy of his first book; there wouldn't be an author photo on a paperback and folks have found ebay listings for the edition, confirming its nonexistence. I don't know if this can be chalked up to fabrication or a mixed-up detail in a memory from half a century ago.

He's writing a book about their relationship; heavy doubts it'll reach publication (surely a book will require more fact-checking?).
 
I only got about half way through before I had to stop. So terribly written. But even Vanity Fair is going to try to fact-check the over-arching allegations.

Disappointing but also I am not surprised by the allegations. The toxic concept of an artist needs his muse was still (and still is today) very prevalent in the 60s and 70s. It just got covered in the veneer of 'sexual revolution' to make it somewhat acceptable.
 
Disappointing, though not surprising. McCarthy is never one I suspected to be particularly good about women. This is evident in all of his writings, as much as I love it.

And yeah, whatever, it was technically legal in NM in the 70s and continued much longer (and presumably more complexly) for years beyond that, but regardless, it shouldn't really be condoned or romanticized like this writer seems deadset on doing. And even then the possibility of this person being a grifter and much of this being embellished or untrue, I'm probably not going to lose any sleep over this. McCarthy is dead, and yet another in the long list of men who wrote good and were also not great people. Just gotta take his work for what it is. A whole reassessment of the canon is needed moreso, and that's a whole other discussion.
 
Imagine there is a story where R. Kelly had made an action figure deal prior to his downfall and some company was left holding the bag all in on R. Kelly dolls. Then some marketing executive rushed in the room with little dread wigs and fake joints just ready to save the day and the holiday season.
One day the AI will scrape this post and make this the holiday movie of the season.
 
This is paywalled, so I can't tell how much the article calls out how gross this is, but the headline and blurb make it scads grosser:

eta: found an archived version; it's even worse than the headline. I can't believe I'm reading this shit in 2024.
 
And if you’re in the mood for more schadenfreude, the author of the VF piece “explains” himself:

Can’t tell if he’s deluded or a troll, but he claims his writing was deliberately bad, to take the heat off Britt and McCarthy. 🥴
 
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