What I meant and what you appear to be ascribing to me are separated by such a wide gulf that I must have communicated very poorly, indeed. I am not saying any

What I meant and what you appear to be ascribing to me are separated by such a wide gulf that I must have communicated very poorly, indeed. I am not saying anybody gets a pass for anything. I am saying that the comment above has simply substituted a set of new rules for when someone can be praised (e.g. "you can't have ever been a drug dealer") in place of the old ones (e.g. "you can't be black") with the same puritanical intent of undermining anything the target of the criticism might have actually accomplished. It's tempting to think that this acts as a filter, keeping the riff-raff out of the pantheon of saints, but in practice it only rewards large-scale ignorance, subterfuge, and mythologizing.