From a reader:

Yglesias accuses those who judge an author by his political stance of sinking into a “cesspool of philistinism.” Indeed, sir. And hasn’t the Left been doing that for at least 20 years? How many schools have removed Mark Twain from the curriculum due to his perceived attitudes toward race? How many schools, even major universities, do not teach Othello because, like my Shakespearean Tragedy prof, it is thought too controversial? Eliot gets slammed by the Left for anti-Semitic poems he wrote as a young man, Pound for his support of Fascism. Please Mr. Yglesias, what is the difference? Pound is the greatest poet to ever come from Idaho and I would bet my laptop that he is untaught in that state or any of the surrounding states solely because of his politics (reprehensible as they were). Is Solzhenitsyn even mentioned in any high school in America? In more that a dozen college literature classrooms? No, too controversial. After all, he romanticizes the czar. Mishima is a footnote now despite the avalanche of “diversity”; too much Japanese militarism and Imperial mysticism for nice American kids. Better to read Amy Tan.
One could go on but the point is that the Left accuses me of Philistinism because I refuse to sit through Mr. Pinter’s spittle on political grounds. Then that same Left turns around and protests, bans and all but erases greater figures on political grounds. Apparently it’s okay for an artist to praise Saddam, Stalin, Mao or Robespierre, but write something nice about Mussolini or an emperor or show the slightest nostalgia for the Old World and you are cast, irredeemably, into the Outer Darkness.