Something in the water?

What's with all the fail this year? Seriously, has someone put something in the water supply that's making folks act like asshats (more than usual)? Midsummer madness of some sort?

The whole SGFail business where Token Lesbian gets to be on the receiving end of a bodyswapping rape scene... (and it just rumbles on - sheafrotherdon is probably your best source for ongoing informantion)

The Mammoth Book of Sci Fi Writers Who Are Awesome Just Like Me (and the rest of you are just jealous!) fail...

John C Wright gets to have a fail all his own...

The latter has certainly lost some sales over this - I had one of his ebooks, which I've now deleted unread and that's his chances of sales from me out of the window. I doubt he cares, but it makes me feel a little bit better after reading his tedious vitriol.

So, can you separate asshattery from artist? Or does knowing something about someone in the public eye make you run away from what they produce? Personally, if I never see another Mel Gibson movie it'll be a thousand years too soon, and the same goes for Tom Cruise - I'm not all that tolerant of either anti-Semites or crazy Scientologists. And then there's Orson Scott Card...