The guy defined what it meant to be classy, hip, and bad ass all at the same time. Mere mortals can barely do just a single one of those.
Let's chalk it to improvement over time. It is not cool not classy anymore. But it is also good to remember that it used to be acceptable thing to say for cool guy, so that we don't idealize past.
It’s the same with book “burnings”: because now the author has an unpopular opinion. It’s ridiculous.
I love the film series, but man, misogyny is deeply rooted in the franchise's foundations. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/10/james-bond-miso...
edit: interesting, went from +2 to -1 in a minute. Going to take this time to point out Hacker News's routine degradation of women as well now that it's on full display again.
Changing makes us better. Virtue signaling does not. Assuming we're monotonously moving towards tolerance and treating people better is also extremely arrogant. The comments to this post demonstrates that with great clarity. Sean Connery isn't even cold and already people line up to piss on his grave.
Next time someone in your family dies, are you going to list their moral shortcomings? The "but" right after listing their accomplishments and good sides? "BUT...he didn't like Asian people, spoke ill of jews and objectified women and stared at Mrs Jenkins daughers tits whenever he could. He ate red meat and belonged to a religion that terrorized much of the world for a thousand years".
Of course not.
But then again, Sean Connery isn't a person to any of us. He is just a symbol of something it is okay to hate. So pissing on his grave is somehow permissible.
What annoys me isn't that people get upset about his views. What upsets me is that people have the absolutely disgusting idea that pissing on his grave makes them better. It doesn't. It just means they are a different kind of asshole.
But that is in no way remotely comparable to a huge worldwide movie star openly endorsing spousal abuse on a major television news program and never retracting it or apologizing.
Obviously we should criticize that extreme of an act far far more than tacit sexism passively accepted by eg an out of touch grandparent or something. You are trying to equate the two but they are not similar at all.
There’s no logical requirement for people to apply this criticism uniformly eg to every racist extended family member in order to be unhypocritical when leveling the criticism against a big media figure.
They even had jokes that approved that sort of thinking.
Look, consensual people can engage in degrading stuff, but we don’t come down on that because we believe that’s a private matter between consenting adults.
Also, art and person are related, both in good and bad. Ones opinions and feelings affects ones art.