The Terror of Not-So-Hidden Skeletonsand the Wrath of the Mazhory

“I’m an ally!” shouted Magister Albus from his spacious atelier. “I try to cultivate an enlightened perspective!” A dribble of sweat trickled down his temple as he eyed the scribe taking down his every word.

“I’m an ally!” bellowed Conviviator Eustacius from the spotlit stage. “I try to cultivate an enlightened perspective!” The two-meter-tall showman hoped his imposing stature would sway the Пу́сси Ра́йот apparatchiki in the audience.

  To the uninitiated, these statements sound like basic — if not shallow — lip service to current-day socio-political issues.
  To those in the know, it’s a 180-degree face-saving performative act, and goes beyond shallowness to outright hypocrisy.
  For years, one of the above fellows openly relished his reputation as “sexist jerk” in both word and verse, as well as his penchant for rough ‘relations,’ so to speak. The other fellow fathered an illegitimate child, for which he has shown no acknowledgment. It matters not which fellow did what. What happened, happened.
  It’s one thing to denounce one’s own past sins when in contrition. But shame plus cowardice often results in projection and finger-pointing without admission of those sins. It’s the easier way out and it makes you look like the Good Guy in the eyes of Big Entertainment’s nomenklatura.
  This is so blatantly obvious that even schoolkids have a rhyme for it, which the sage social analyst L.L. Carter reminds us: “He who smelt it, dealt it; and he who denied it, supplied it.”