This creeps me out.
[Description: it’s a drawing or cartoon at the top of the Twitter account Four Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse, with Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens striding in line, based on the familiar image of the Beatles striding across Abbey Road.]
Why is it so creepy?
The worship, the fandom, the adulation, the drastic limitation of horizons.
Comments
6 responses to “Just four and no more”
Hitchens used to mock North Korea as being a “necrocracy” for conferring the title “Eternal General Secretary” on Kim Jong Un’s long-dead grandfather. There’s a rather pathetic irony in continuing to hold Hitchens up as a “leader.”
The creepiest part ends up being, I think, that this is not a parody twitter account. Apparently.
Also, there’s the aspect of social values. That is, even if all the Beatles had turned out to be Cosby-style/level jerks, fair observers would still have to admit they did some great music. Enjoyment of it could be diminished, just as you might not be able to enjoy reruns of I Spy or videos of Cosby’s classic routines because you think about his gruesome “hobby”, but it wouldn’t mean those shows and routines and albums weren’t really good.
The work done could be separated, at least in theory, from personal actions.
But for these supposed “great” four guys, their reason for being famous enough to make the above drawing, and repeatedly refer to them as leaders, is social commentary. You cannot separate it from any abhorrent social commentary they also (regularly) express. And Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris have/had some really abhorrent social views, views which they expressed loudly and frequently. (I’m not aware of any real crap of that sort spilling from Dennett’s pen, but on the brand of pseudoscience I know a lot about – the “aquatic ape theory” – he has kept his mind so open his brains fell out.)
So for these postulated Bad Beatles, as for Bill Cosby, their work (at least Cosby’s earlier, not so moralistic work) would not be part and parcel with abhorrent personal actions, but for the “four horsesasses” they’re all part of social commentary for which were supposed to admire them.
Cosby a jerk? Hey, I like Cosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Oh wait, wrong guys. … you were talking about music and I got confused.
Almost … cut my hair!
Crosby. Not Cosby.