David Erickson
David Erickson
Or do you at all? I've met a few winemakers who I thought had their heads up their asses, but ol' Fulvio here seems kinda repellent.
Where do you draw a line?
- Thread starter David Erickson
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Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
Oh, so many great artists are odious people (anti-semites, Nazi/Vichy sympathizers, racists, sexists, Tsarists... which "isms" bother you most?).
Lou Kessler
Lou Kessler
We will not sell Fulvio Bresson's wines in our store from this moment on no matter how he may apologize. Now I have to admit we have never sold his wines at any time in our store. I have to agree with Jeff some of the most talented people in the history of the world have been total assholes in many aspects of their personal lives.
Florida Jim
Florida Jim
'Man gets to say what he wants.
We get to buy what we want.
Somewhere in that equation is a balance point.
Best, Jim
We get to buy what we want.
Somewhere in that equation is a balance point.
Best, Jim
No he doesn't.
The only absolute freedom is living alone on an island, and not too many people sign up for that. Plus those places are hard to find.
(I'm not saying he didn't have the 'right' to say these things, just drawing out the broader point. And for what it's worth, this is not just nitpicking because hate speech laws are much tougher in Europe than in the US)
Keith Levenberg
Keith Levenberg
I never heard of this guy or his wines until yesterday. All of a sudden I see scores of people tripping over themselves in the rush to announce they're boycotting him.
Florida Jim
Florida Jim
Rahsaan,
With respect, the broader point is balance and responsibility.
Not free/legal or hate/illegal speech.
Best, Jim
Levi Dalton
Levi Dalton
Really?
That's surprising that you had never heard of the wines. Probably speaking more to the distribution of the wines in New York, but still surprising.
He's not nobody.
David Erickson
David Erickson
A common enough response. I wonder whether it is actually true. Hmmm...where is the list of the 50 Most Loathsome Great Artists? The only names I can come up with at the moment are Ezra Pound and Richard Wagner.
Oliver McCrum
Oliver McCrum
As they should, in my view.
It must be said that his wines are very expensive, which will make boycotting them pretty easy.
Levi Dalton
Levi Dalton
Levi Dalton
Levi Dalton
This doesn't jive with my experience in either the interest of the wines or their expense, but if that's what you think then that's what you drink.
Oliver McCrum
Oliver McCrum
I wasn't talking about just drinking, I'm an importer. But no, we don't have to like the same wines. And the prices he gave me at Vinitaly this year were very high.
Lou Kessler
Lou Kessler
We must define loathsome. Beethoven, Mozart, were assholes in their private lives, does that make them loathsome? Hitler was loathsome Charles Lindberg was an asshole. Love to listen to Sinatra, private life an asshole. I think definitions sometimes are very personal. I'm still not going to sell what's his name's wine.
Jay Miller
Jay Miller
If you include sf authors there's Orson Scott Card
Lou Kessler
Lou Kessler
Crawl back into your hole, you saw your shadow and nobody wants to communicate with you for another six weeks.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
George Bernard Shaw (preferred dictators to parliaments)
Coco Chanel (Nazi spy)
Mel Gibson (holocaust denier)
Gertrude Stein (Vichy sympathizer)
Leni Riefenstahl (duh)
Michael Jackson (underage)
Roman Polanski (underage)
Peter Yarrow (underage)
Woody Allen (incest?)
Tom Cruise (wacko)
...etc.
As Lou said, and as I said, the only difficulty is defining what exactly is odious to you and your readership. After that, finding odious people is easy.
I'll leave you with a quote attributed to Cardinal Richelieu: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."