Did You See What I Saw?

I recently saw The Ghost Writer and a few weeks ago Edge Of Darkness. The first is directed by Roman Polanski, the second stars Mel Gibson.

There are some who said you should avoid one or the other because of the man behind them. They may have a point, but generally I prefer not to judge the morality of seeing a film based on the morality of the people behind it. (I suppose if I did I'd have to avoid most of the films out there.) Perhaps there are limits, but I'd rather err on the side of tolerance.

A stronger question is when someone produces something and you read it because of his bad act. I'm thinking right now of the six-page rant produced by the man who crashed his plane into an IRS building. In it he lays out his anger, and why he's doing what he's doing. But I don't think he killed himself just to draw attention to this letter. He was just nuts and this was his last chance to vent. Still, he did assume it would be read because of what he did.

Much more troubling was reading the Unabomber's Manifesto. He didn't make one grand action to draw attention to incoherent rage, he made a series of criminal acts (and intended to continue) just so his ideas could be spread. He even states (correctly) in his piece that the reader wouldn't be looking at his ideas unless he had done what he did.