What I've noticed is there's a section of fans who when pressed will admit they don't actually care how George was treated. For them it all comes back to he wasn't on their level so it doesn't matter. He didn't deserve his friends being kind to him. They have this attitude similar to how people used to view a character like House. "He's a genius therefore whatever he does is correct even if he's a dick about it. Anyone who pushes against him is simply an annoyance in the way."
It's one of several reasons I hate the magical thinking around John and Paul.
Ohhh this actually makes SO much sense. Because in the back of my mind I've noticed this odd thing in the fandom (and probably the more mclennon-centered part of the fandom, now that I'm thinking about it) where fans are both very up front that the JohnPaul machinery was pretty much designed to fuck George and Ringo professionally and financially, but somehow also very defensive and angry about it. It's like the general vibes are "these two clearly took advantage and that was wrong and I'm furious that you think it was wrong how they took advantage." It makes no sense.
But when you put it in the context of not really giving a shit that John and Paul took advantage, it actually makes perfect sense. It's less "I'm angry you think they took advantage" than "I'm angry that the fact that they took advantage is distracting from the part of the story that's actually interesting to me, which is their relationship to one another." Presumably, a lot of fans don't want to see a beautiful tragic gay love story framed as a story about two entitled old white dudes who were kind of weaselly when it came to money.
Which is something I actually understand -- I suspect most of us are more interested in some parts of the story than other parts, and for a lot of people the JohnPaul machinery is only interesting to the extent that it reflects on the tragic mclennon romance. It's not at all interesting to them in the way that it fucked over the people John and Paul worked with.
When you get down to it, this is both a tragic doomed gay love story and a story about two entitled old white dudes who were weaselly when it came to money. I'm interested in both sides of that (as well as quite a few of the secondary characters), but I get that not everyone will be. Hence the mclennon-as-beautiful-love-story-and-that's-it part of the fandom doesn't hold that much interest for me.
It does annoy me, though, when people try to justify John and Paul just being cartoonishly shitty when it came to money with that "tortured asshole genius" thing you mentioned. It's so easy to be an artistic genius and also a generally decent person who doesn't go out of their way to fuck over their friends. People do it every day. What's difficult is to be in a position of privilege and power and be a generally decent person.
Robert Caro has a quote about power not being corruptive but revealing -- power doesn't force people to be oppressive or to take advantage, it just allows them to. i think that's probably true, but it's also kind of concerning, since it seems like virtually everyone who achieves spectacular wealth and power turns out to be a bit of a weasel.
