OUT OF CONTEXT

Dear Spike:

Among the hundreds of men uniformly clad in black T-shirts, orange pants and black Converse sneakers were murderers, muggers, rapists and drug pushers.

In the now-famous exercise yard at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines, they danced to the music of an accused child molester — to viral worldwide admiration.

In that context, it's a rather unsettling scene. And yet, out of context, it would hardly be worth remarking upon at all.

If you limit your appreciation to that which is created by those whose lives reflect your own standards of morality, integrity and decency, you'll miss out on a lot.

The King of Pop was, at very least, a radically inappropriate adult companion to young children at his Disneyesque mansion. But if you disregard his songs out of contempt for his lifestyle, you'll be missing out on a canon that changed the way the world thought about popular music.

One of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th Century is a decrepit coward who has spent the past three decades avoiding punishment for raping a 13-year-old girl. Yet if you never see Roman Polanski's The Pianist, you'd be missing a film of enormous power, grace and humanity.

One of the greatest golfer of all time is a philandering jackass who defiled his marriage, his duties as a father and his status as a role model in exchange for a trashy troupe of cocktail waitresses and skin models. But if you never saw Tiger Woods play golf, you'd miss the opportunity to see a man so good at his craft that he is often only in competition with himself.

Jackson Pollock redefined painting. He was an explosively abusive alcoholic.

Bill Cosby has made generation after generation of Americans laugh and came to be known as "America's Dad." He also cheated on his wife and allegedly drugged women to get them into bed.

And those prisoners? Who knows the extent of evil that resulted in their incarceration at Cebu. But millions upon millions of people have watched their joyful dances — and been made joyful as a result.

Art is beauty sometimes borne of beast. But it is beauty nonetheless.

Love,
dad