When Edmund Morris published "Dutch," his biography of Ronald Reagan, four years ago, he was roundly condemned for making things up.
Richard Wilbur (born in 1921) has been for decades a Grand Old Man of American poetry, and he's spent most of his career being alternately praised and condemned for the same three things.
But it works well enough to allow him to ask an uncomfortable question: Why is it that the Beatles and others who "built on the work of black precursors but took the music in new directions" in the 1960s have been routinely praised for accomplishing this feat, while Whiteman has been roundly condemned for doing essentially the same thing 40 years earlier?
A leader emerged, who brightly observed that the "likees" were "all white male" (untrue) and "I suggest sending personal messages to these people on how insenstive (sic), racist, anti-semitic they are! bastards!" Someone wryly responded, "Let's condemn people for things that we don't understand!" Another responded, "I see dumb people, they're everywhere, they don't even know that they're dumb".
Neither of these things happened, but he was condemned for heresy, kept under house arrest, and forced to declare that he cursed and detested the "errors and heresies" of his scientific work.
The only thing he thought he might be condemned for was for abiding by the terms of the confessional, and if by that action he had offended the king or state, he asked for forgiveness.
"It's the most brutal of things that can happen to a human being to be condemned for a crime you didn't commit.
"It's the most brutal thing that can happen to a human being – being condemned for a crime you didn't commit.
He was eventually condemned for heresy.
Lose, and be condemned for your foolishness.
