Is it Okay to Admire Certain Horrible People?

[TakerFoxx]

So, I'm a big pro-wrestling fan, and one of the men I hold the most respect for is Paul Heyman. If you don't know who he is, he's the guy behind ECW, which was one of the principal pioneers of hardcore wrestling. And while they never reached the success of WWE or even WCW, the they still had a tremendous influence on the business that is still felt to this day. He is also one of the most brilliant bookers, managers, and mic-workers in all of pro-wrestling. The ideas he's had, the superstars he's brought up, and just about every promo he cuts have quite often been nothing short of genius. Every angle he's part of is automatically better for his presence, and every time they allow him as part of the writing/booking staff, magic happens.

And yet you just can't get around the fact that he is, in real life, kind of a horrible person. He's a self-admitted liar, he's a royal pain in the ass to work with, he seems to go out of his way to antagonize people, he's notorious for sabotaging other people to get what he wants, and he all but deceived and ripped off nearly everyone who worked for him in ECW and still owes them thousands of dollars in royalties and back-pay despite promising them repeatedly that they would get their money. He lied his way into his first few jobs and seems rather proud of the fact, made a habit of telling people what they wanted to hear to get his way with no intention of backing it up, and at one point (and I shit you not) he fired his own mother. For real.

Granted most of this took place a long time ago and he's reportedly mellowed since then, but even so, that's some pretty bad shit! And yet I can't help but really admire the guy, not just for all he's done for the business but also his sheer audacity at times (not for the ripping his employees off and firing his mom though. That's just messed up). But I still kind of feel uncomfortable for doing so and wonder if I'm whitewashing what he did just because he's done some things that I like.

So, what do you think? Is it okay to admire and respect certain artists/leaders/celebrities/whatever if they're bad people so long as they don't do something truly horrible, in a sort of "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" thing? Or should horrible behavior take the forefront over their accomplishments?

 

[Euryalus]

People have different qualities. The guy who's more honest than pinocchio with a normal sized nose, a loving father, brother, and son, and a hard worker could be the same person who hates Jews or Muslims or Gays for being who they are.

The mean spirited, snarky, chronic douche you know at school or work could be the same person who spends hours of their day working hard to practice learning a language or playing guitar despite not having natural talent.

People have their own virtues and vices that make up their person and you can respect for what they do have.

I mean even here on the escapist there are people that piss me off and I generally dislike for good reason, but still have a lot of respect for. I find it odd that people are so unwilling to see people for the complicated things they are and just decide to hate someone completely and utterly because of certain vices or opinions or traits they have that are distasteful or even just distasteful to you.

 

[Itdoesthatsometimes]

Well, though questions are usually best left to introspection. What does this song mean to you?

Lyrics
All the talk of getting results
Yeah results in stabbing backs
Taught to get in front
When someone's gotta fall to the back, Jack
So I tried to play the straight way
For every penny giving thanks
All the talk of saving
Was probably talk of filling banks

Defiled like the rest of 'em
Defiled anyway

Well I never had no heroes
And heroes had no time for me
And the damsels in distress
Were always too tied up for me
Yeah you can make like Ma Theresa
Or you can make like Jesse James
Stick 'em up or kneel down
They got the goods
They earned their names

Defiled like the rest of 'em
Defiled anyway
Well everyone they said were sinners
Gave me faith to play the game

No I never had no heroes
And heroes had no time for me
My eyes are dirty
I can't see

Yeah, I answered with a punk song, I am a horrible person.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

It depends on what you admire them for. Everyone has facets of good and bad, and no one is perfect. If you admire someone you should ask yourself if you admire them for the right reasons.

I admire Bill Gates. I admire the fact that he built one of the world's biggest companies out of nothing, I admire the fact that the products he invented completely changed the way the world operates, and I admire how much time and money he gives to charity and to causes he believes in. At the same time I know that I shouldn't admire many of his business practices because they were both anti-competitive and anti-consumer and that one of the reasons that microsoft is such a huge company is that it systematically destroyed its competition (sometimes in the scummiest ways possible).

In your mind can you divorce what someone accomplished with how they accomplished it? Can you idolize parts of their personality while rejecting others? Does admitting that Hitler was a great orator mean that you agreed with him? Of course not.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

You can admire a person's work but not necessarily the person him/herself.

 

[Sunkore]

Isaac Newton was an insane sociopath, that doesn't invalidate the fact that he set the foundations of modern physics.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yes.

Hell, to be a really horrible person you need certain admirable traits.

However, admiring them for some things shouldn't blind you to their flaws. It's very easy for this to happen, though. It's much easier to see people as good or bad as a binary, and this causes all sorts of problems.

 

[Guffe]

Yeah, I mean some world leaders and war generals have been nothing else but pure geniouses in their line of work even though what they have done (war) is very horrible.
Something like that.

 

[DoomDoom]

You can admire whoever you want. I doubt I'm in a position to tell you who or who not to admire.

Paul Heyman, based on what you have said, has some strengths and weaknesses. I think it is normal to admire people for their strengths. However, do be aware of their weaknesses as well. Paul Heyman sounds like a sociopath (major weakness).

I think people should figure out how the person they admire would behave towards them in real life situations. For example, I know people that like Gordon Ramsay for his skills. However, I wonder if they would continue to like him if they work with him and put up with his constant shouting and rude behaviour (which I think he does for publicity).

No one wants to be treated badly. We all want to be treated with respect. So it is important to see how the people you admire would behave towards you because you don't want to be disappointed. You may find that their skills/achievements are not significant to you anymore due to their bad character.

 

[Aetherlblade]

Sure you can, I can admire Genghis Khan, Napoleon and so forth for their accomplishments and skill at what they do, that doesn't make them good people though.

 

[lionsprey]

ofc you can admire aspects of horrible people.
i am a huge fan of Lovecrafts works but i wouldn't waste my breath defending his views

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Sure. Just look at George Soros. He's practically a Bond villain. That's admirable.

 

[TakerFoxx]

I guess the reason it's kind of bothering me is that it's not so much a case of admiring someone's talent and contributions while disliking them as a person as it is me genuinely liking Paul Heyman and being a big fan of his but feeling sort of uncomfortable placing him on a pedestal even though he's done some pretty messed up things that I would be quick to condemn in other people. I was watching a documentary on his career, and when it got to yhe part on how he lied his way into the backstage and into several prestigious jobs, my first reaction was "Heh, that's pretty clever" followed by "No, wait! That's messed up! Why am I admiring him for that?" And then it got to the part about all the people he ripped off and still owed money to (which I actually already knew about) and was shaking my head at what he did but still kind of impressed by his audacity. So I guess this is just an internal hypocrite check.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

And yet you just can't get around the fact that he is, in real life, kind of a horrible person. He's a self-admitted liar, he's a royal pain in the ass to work with, he seems to go out of his way to antagonize people, he's notorious for sabotaging other people to get what he wants, and he all but deceived and ripped off nearly everyone who worked for him in ECW and still owes them thousands of dollars in royalties and back-pay despite promising them repeatedly that they would get their money. He lied his way into his first few jobs and seems rather proud of the fact, made a habit of telling people what they wanted to hear to get his way with no intention of backing it up, and at one point (and I shit you not) he fired his own mother. For real.

Regarding the Paulrus, he did go bankrupt over ECW trying to hold it together and a lot of the negative stories regarding him also came from people who already have less-than-reputable reputations in the wrestling industry. Plus if he was so untrustworthy, he wouldn't be working for WWE in any capacity nor have the respect of certain folks within it. Most of the people who've got a grudge against him are from the ECW days and don't know the whole story of just how thinly stretched ECW was and how much Paul invested in that company, so much so that he never took a dime from any of the loans made to ECW. Remember that in pro wrestling, there's a lot of talent ego as well and that colors a lot of the "promises" you hear about.
That being said, I think he's like any decent businessperson out there: Sometimes you make promises you can't keep and have to eat your words later in life. I don't know him personally but I've worked on the outskirts of the industry before and have a few friends that have been in or around those events or worked with more famous personas. All I get out of what I've experienced and what I've been told is that you don't know the whole story, just that what you do hear is likely colored by bad blood. So I'd take what's "known" as "fact" and put it in the "grain of salt" category. Like I said, his current status in WWE marks a different picture than he's been painted as, as I'm fairly certain if he was so horrible a person he wouldn't have that job.
The wrestling business is chock full of ego and politics, and in the end is a business. Sometimes egos clash, and people get mixed up on what they feel they're owed vs. what actually went down. I choose to stick to the middle road when it comes to those stories, that there probably was some bad deals, and there also was some miscommunication and the result was somewhat less horrible than what stories are told.
On the subject of admiring horrible people and wrestling, well there's one name I'd say above all others fits that category: Chris Benoit. The man's accomplishments and in-ring ability were top notch, and his matches hall-of-fame worthy. But the last days of his life will always overshadow his accomplishments. I don't need to repeat any of what happened as its well known, even if its somewhat mitigated by traumatic brain injuries sustained over the career (you don't take multiple bumps to the head like that and come out normal). I admire his wrestling past, but I don't think I can ever admire him as a person just because of what happened. Even his best friend Chris Jericho thinks what he did wasn't necessarily 100% due to cumulative brain injury, and I'd go with the opinion of someone who'd known the dude personally. So while I admire his career, I definitely don't admire him as a person. Sad really.
I guess it is ok to admire horrible people as long as you're not doing it for the wrong reasons. I'd say admiring someone like Mussolini for the trains running on time is really a poor reason when compared to the rest of his life.

 

[snappydog]

And yet you just can't get around the fact that he is, in real life, kind of a horrible person. He's a self-admitted liar, he's a royal pain in the ass to work with, he seems to go out of his way to antagonize people, he's notorious for sabotaging other people to get what he wants, and he all but deceived and ripped off nearly everyone who worked for him in ECW and still owes them thousands of dollars in royalties and back-pay despite promising them repeatedly that they would get their money. He lied his way into his first few jobs and seems rather proud of the fact, made a habit of telling people what they wanted to hear to get his way with no intention of backing it up, and at one point (and I shit you not) he fired his own mother. For real.

snippety snip

I think it's possible to admire a person's qualities, or certain of them, without admiring them as an individual. Benoit's definitely a great example; I only got into wrestling relatively recently so I couldn't form an opinion on Benoit without knowing what he did, and I can see that he was a great wrestler and I admire that quality but as a person I would never hold him in positive regard.

Paul's a slightly harder case: he is legitimately respectable for his business brain, eye for talent, talking ability (heck, he's easily the best talker in WWE right now), and he does seem to have mellowed out a bit - in his appearances on Austin and Jericho's podcasts he comes across as a decent enough guy nowadays - but yeah, if Sabu in particular is to be believed, he did some pretty shitty things. As far as being hard to work with, I actually haven't heard that one. He often talks about how Vince wanted him to be the guy who would disagree, so maybe that has something to do with it... Anyway, I definitely admire a lot of things about him, even if I don't think we'd get along personally. He is Brock Lesnar's best friend, after all.

 

[lord canti]

You should never feel guilty about admiring a man whose client, Brock Lesnar, beat the undertaker at wrestlemania.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I draw the line at action I guess. If the person is an historical figure, they are put into a limbo depending on what was socially acceptable at the time.

Horrible people who I don't admire or respect: Orson Scott Card, the man is a bigot and has supported bigotry.

Horrible people who I respect somewhat: Milo Yiannopoulos, has transphobic views, but ultimately a pretty reasonable guy who acknowledged his opinions on videogames were flawed.

Horrible people who I admire and respect: Oda Nobunaga. The guy did horrible things to his enemies. But he got the job done and new what made a country strong.

_

Ultimately I think a problem in modern society is that some people are too obsessed with people having clean views in order to listen to them.

So a bigot who is reasonable gets hated more than a non-bigot who tried to get people fired for petty reasons. Is that ok? I say no.

That's the difference between Milo Yiannopoulos and Ben Kuchera.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Paul's a slightly harder case: he is legitimately respectable for his business brain, eye for talent, talking ability (heck, he's easily the best talker in WWE right now), and he does seem to have mellowed out a bit - in his appearances on Austin and Jericho's podcasts he comes across as a decent enough guy nowadays - but yeah, if Sabu in particular is to be believed, he did some pretty shitty things. As far as being hard to work with, I actually haven't heard that one. He often talks about how Vince wanted him to be the guy who would disagree, so maybe that has something to do with it... Anyway, I definitely admire a lot of things about him, even if I don't think we'd get along personally. He is Brock Lesnar's best friend, after all.

Sabu is one of those guys who, from what I've heard from friends who worked with him, is the very definition of "consider the source". He's a poor attitude, huge ego and has held shows hostage before for more money or outright no-showed without warning. Hell thats the reason Paul fired him from ECW the first time, and Paul even left that up to the ECW fans rather than just do it. In Paul's defense he even brought Sabu back to feud with Taz (who hated Sabu legit) later. Even Vince found Sabu unreliable and changed some PPV cards due to the guy's attitude in the later ECW incarnation (which was a horrible experiment but I digress).
As such, when guys like Steve Austin and Mick Foley go to bat for Paul Heyman, I tend to believe them over almost anyone else.

 

[snappydog]

Sabu is one of those guys who, from what I've heard from friends who worked with him, is the very definition of "consider the source". He's a poor attitude, huge ego and has held shows hostage before for more money or outright no-showed without warning. Hell thats the reason Paul fired him from ECW the first time, and Paul even left that up to the ECW fans rather than just do it. In Paul's defense he even brought Sabu back to feud with Taz (who hated Sabu legit) later. Even Vince found Sabu unreliable and changed some PPV cards due to the guy's attitude in the later ECW incarnation (which was a horrible experiment but I digress).
As such, when guys like Steve Austin and Mick Foley go to bat for Paul Heyman, I tend to believe them over almost anyone else.

Absolutely, it's very much 'if he's to be believed' and... I'm not entirely sure he is. He's the only source I actually know on the whole 'ripping talent off' thing; I'm sure there are other, more reputable ones, but I don't know who. Basically, I haven't really heard anything that's made me genuinely dislike Paul E., although the OP obviously has.