Can We Let Bygones Be Bygones and Stop the Persecution?

With news that John Galliano has signed a major new deal with Zara, the outrage cycle against him has reared its ugly head.

Calls for boycotts. Moral outrage. Cancel culture, run amuck. Seriously? Here we are fifteen years later—so why are y’all still having the same conversation?

When Galliano’s antisemitic rant first surfaced in 2011, I wrote an article for the Huffington Post, The Galliano Conundrum, which went viral—before going viral was a daily thing.

The position I took was not to judge Galliano, who clearly was drowning in addiction. Anyone who understands or has survived addiction—as in my case—knows there’s a massive difference between being stoned out of one’s gord and being in a blackout.

It doesn’t excuse the damage nor erase the vile words he spewed. But it does explain the chaos plaguing a creative genius in an industry suffering from the global economic crisis and the pressure he was under to perform at a level that most........

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