It has nothing to do with people having a squeaky clean legacy.
If a world famous celebrity uses the megaphone of a televised interview to double down on and expand on views that it’s ok to slap women, that is a huge, dramatic event. That’s not just some small “we all make mistakes” transgression to be forgiven while we remember that person at his best. It is a huge, intentional literal broadcast of a very harmful belief, that we should not minimize or ignore or even set aside to remember other things about them, due to its level of severity and the sustained commitment to it over years that he displayed.
I think it’s very specious and very disingenuous to try to bring in any type of “let he who is sinless cast the first stone” or “let’s remember the good with the bad because he is only human” type of defense. That is just not acceptable in a case like this.
Alright, so what is your proposed idea to deal with _anyone_ like this? If Connery's remark is huge and dramatic, what does that mean for everyone else?
It took Connery to die for you to bring this topic up. I would expect you cared about this before the news, and not just in light of it.
This issues has been brought up about Connery all the time.
Most people who display this type of direct misogyny don’t happen to also be world-famous movie stars using a national television broadcast to amplify the message.
So obviously because of the harm it propagates and the precedent it sets, Connery’s behavior should be railed against with much more effort than transgressions with far less widespread impact - but of course regular people committing the same transgression absolutely deserve for their behavior to be used to highlight moral reprehensibility (assuming they refuse to apologize or retract those views like Connery).
If a world famous celebrity uses the megaphone of a televised interview to double down on and expand on views that it’s ok to slap women, that is a huge, dramatic event. That’s not just some small “we all make mistakes” transgression to be forgiven while we remember that person at his best. It is a huge, intentional literal broadcast of a very harmful belief, that we should not minimize or ignore or even set aside to remember other things about them, due to its level of severity and the sustained commitment to it over years that he displayed.
I think it’s very specious and very disingenuous to try to bring in any type of “let he who is sinless cast the first stone” or “let’s remember the good with the bad because he is only human” type of defense. That is just not acceptable in a case like this.