I'm not sold.
Look, personally, I'm perfectly fine with accepting that people's views change over time, especially with respect to what is culturally acceptable. I have no issue with acknowledging that some people might have accepted racist tropes in the 80s without questioning them, and have since changed their assumptions. I have no doubt that many people may have unthinkingly accepted that homosexuality was immoral in the 90s, and through education and exposure no longer hold that view. Personally, I think that's a reasonable and rational approach.
What I take issue with is the selective approach to who merits forgiveness and who doesn't.
Why should Dr. Dre - who was involved with some incredibly violent and misogynistic content, as well as having personally abused females - be forgiven for his 'prior' views toward women... but other people do NOT merit any compromise? For example, there was the guy hired at Boeing, who "resigned" the position after repeated calls for his resignation, over some sexist remarks he had made decades prior. There was the baker who fired his own child after they child disclosed that they had made racist comments on line several years prior, and regretted them, but the baker still lost a huge amount of business because someone else's past remarks made him a leper. Now we've got Garcia-Martinez, whose comments in context are clearly hyperbolic, hypothetical, and intended as a counterpoint to the characteristics he found so attractive in an intimate partner.
Why does Dre's actual violent and clearly misogynistic creative content and real life actions get a pass in current times, but the much less impactful prior comments of other people are forever held over their heads?
