I suffer the dreams of a world gone mad.

From :

Ferry Apologizes for Nazi Comments

British rocker Bryan Ferry has apologized "unreservedly" for praising the Nazi propaganda machine. The Roxy Music singer, 61, was recently quoted in an interview with German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag as saying, "My God, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves.

Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful." The comments have caused outrage in Ferry's native Britain, and have raised questions over the star's modeling contact with retail chain Marks And Spencer, which was founded and owned by Jewish immigrant Michael Marks.

In a statement, Ferry says, "I apologize unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were made solely from an art history perspective. I, like every right-minded individual, find the Nazi regime, and all it stood for, evil and abhorrent."

I find this sort of thing more and more tiresome, especially as it becomes more and more common.

I can say that Leni Riefenstahl was an amazing filmmaker without it meaning that I'm a Nazi sympathizer. She was.

I can say that D.

W. Griffith was an amazing filmmaker as well, without it making me a racist or a Klan sympathizer.

I can say that Wagner wrote transcendant music without it making me an anti-Semite.

I can say that I love the films of Woody Allen without it making me the type of person who would leave my wife for her teenage foster daughter.

I can say that Hitler was an incredibly charismatic leader without it meaning that I approve of a single thing that he did as a leader. If he wasn't so charismatic and inspiring, he never would have come to power.

He was elected and extremely popular, and that is a separate issue from his being pure evil.

Let's all step back and take a deep breath, people. Let's try to separate the art from the artist, and try not to confuse recognition of legitimate talents for an approval of what one uses those talents for.

The fact that Bryan Ferry had to justify, apologize, or explain those very simple (and very true) comments is fucking ridiculous. Somehow, we've become entirely unable, as a society, to think critically about what a person is actually saying, and we hear things in selected words, and file it away in our brain accordingly without taking time to analyse the meaning. We read Ferry's statement and all we take away from it is "Nazis.

..amazing.

..beautiful.

" Nevermind that there are a whole bunch of other words in there that are pretty important. That might turn our black and white perception into a shade of grey, and it would delay us from moving on swiftly and decisively to the next person to crucify for a quote that we'll only be too happy to quickly misunderstand.

Most of all, I hate that I even feel the need to write a stupid post like this, because this should be simple and blatantly obvious stuff, and the type of educated and ostensibly progressively minded people who seem to always get their knickers in a twist about this sort of thing should simply know better.