It’s always fascinating to see who gets cancelled because some random nobody made false assertions about someone in an article nobody read, who gets cancelled due to a single tweet, and who doesn’t get cancelled when multiple women accuse him of monstrous acts for which he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep quiet.
“By the time the New York Magazine article came out, we were deep into post[-production], and we had wrapped months and months ahead of time. So that’s when it became a factor for me. Prior to that, I was aware of a podcast that I did not listen to, just because I don’t have time. Do you know what I mean? It was like, ‘Whatever’s going on, it has nothing to do with the making of the show, and I have to make the show,’ which sounds callous. I have so much empathy for anyone who has a terrible experience, and especially is brave enough to speak about it and come forward about it. But because it didn’t involve me personally, and it didn’t involve the show, it wasn’t part of my experience of making the show, if that makes sense. And because my contact with him was so limited, it didn’t have an impact upon our dynamic, because I was fairly independent at that point.”
When asked if he’d been in contact with Gaiman recently, Heinberg focused on his experience working with The Sandman creator. “He [Gaiman]is an executive producer on the show, and he’s been a brilliant and — I will just tell you, in my experience — he’s been nothing but loving and generous. And I don’t know that if I had created a comic and some guy came in and made it into a TV show, I don’t know that I would have been as loving and trusting and generous. And that’s my Neil Gaiman experience.”
Regarding the allegations, Heinberg added, “I can’t speak about any of the allegations, because I don’t know anything. So I feel for everyone involved, and I wish we lived in a world where there was room for nuance, and everybody’s point of view is valid, including Neil’s. And that’s where I am: Everybody has a truth, everybody has an experience as it happened to them. And if there is — this is going way too far — but I’m not involved in it, in any of it. I respect everybody involved, and the worst thing I could do is make it about me in any way, if that makes sense.”
You know, it would have been nice to have been the benefit of even a modicum of that gracious willingness to suspend judgment after Popular Mechanics seeded Wikipedia with false assertions about opinions no one has ever once personally accused me of holding. Not even once in more than fifty years.
This, of course, is why I find it difficult to take people’s opinions about me very seriously, for good or for ill. Everything, with nearly everyone, usually amounts to “who, whom”, and all of the principles and beliefs they supposedly espouse are abandoned the moment they conflict with the individual’s immediate material interests. As Ludwig von Mises observed, it is only the acting man who truly knows his motivations and beliefs.
Everything else is just noise. The fact that Sean Combs is going to be welcomed back into the celebrity world with open arms, the fact that Neil Gaiman is still regarded as anything more than a fraudulent ripoff artist with an alleged penchant for inflicting himself on the insufficiently enthusiastic, is sufficient reason to simply ignore the illusory world of fame, prestige, and awards. Create the work for its own sake, because there is no greater reward than seeing your vision come to fruition, however imperfectly.