If you think Allen is a child molester, either the conversation ends or you invoke the difference between “the artist and the man” (the theme Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway). Very few who think he’s guilty are willing to do the latter.

I’m disinterested in adjudicating the matter. We’ll never know whether or not he did those things. And reducing the question of whether or not Allen deserves his social prominence and accolades to “did he or didn’t he?” tosses out decades of artistic accomplishment and service to progressive ideas too rashly. For the left, Woody Allen has long been a force for good. Particularly in the 1960s and 70s, and throughout his body of work, he has advocated for peace and tolerance with singular panache…

As a progressive, I’ll take my cue from a progressive artist, look at Allen’s life and decide to not judge. The country is better off with him as a cultural force and his ideas about politics and how we should treat each other are ones that his critics on the left would do well to embrace and to extend to the auteur.I’m looking forward to a Woody Allen movie a year for as long as he can, and this Amazon series, as well.