Rosemary McLeod: Strict stance could deplete us all

I'ts a brave middle-aged Pakeha who'll criticise the winner of a Polynesian music award, so I give Jill Proudfoot due credit for that.
Proudfoot is the client service director of the domestic violence support group Shine.
Reacting to Joshua 'J' Williams' win at the Pacific Music Awards last weekend, she said she was disappointed with the organisers for not snubbing him because of his domestic violence record. He has admitted attacking his former partner.
Proudfoot went further, saying he was "not worthy" of the award and didn't deserve to be celebrating, adding that this was "a moral stand to take". And that's where she made me uneasy.
Domestic violence is loathsome. That's an easy moral stand to take. But I'm not so sure about taking a hard-out moral stand against people because of failings in their personal relationships, to the extent that they're denied recognition of their talent.
Williams is reportedly sorry, and aware that his public expects more of him. Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua, accepting the award on his behalf, said he's attending support groups, being counselled, and accepts that he needs to change. He is at least doing the right thing now, then, and should be given the chance to prove himself a better man.
The entertainment world is - always has been - packed with talented people whose private lives would appal anyone who pried into them. If we took a moral stand against all the drug addicts, chronic womanisers, general misery-causers and alcoholics among them, we'd have to shut our eyes and ears to a great deal of harmless pleasure. What's more - and this would be a tragedy - country music would not exist.
"I don't see how we can separate the personal and the public, and if we're a person in private that behaves badly, we shouldn't be a person who is idolised in public," Proudfoot insists. But we do it all the time, and regularly watch our idols fall, knowing that, like us, they are human, not perfect.
What's at issue here is, in part, appearances. Proudfoot invites us, by inference, to believe that people in public life who seem to be squeaky clean probably are. The rest of us, less rigid in our thinking, are probably just relieved not to know their secrets.
Take the ageing King of Sweden. It would be a good idea to. You could be fooled by his banal looks and boring steel-framed glasses into thinking he'd like to watch wildlife documentaries of an evening, sipping herbal tea out of dainty porcelain while his queen needlepointed his slippers. But such is not the case.
A series of scandals involving King Carl Gustaf and foolish young women is currently engaging the world's attention. It seems that rather than being a dull old monarch, he's an old perv, with a liking for strippers. Most Swedes now say he should abdicate in favour of his daughter, but you may be sure he's going about his normal duties as if nothing has happened, and this will blow over. People need kings, apparently, and entertainers, definitely. Besides, kings have carried on like this since kings began.
Another current challenge to the truth or otherwise of appearances has to be SlutWalks, which began in April in Toronto after a police official said, "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised".
Unsurprisingly, the idea took hold in Australia, home of 24/7 bikini wearers. Thousands of people have now marched in Melbourne and Brisbane SlutWalks to support the right of women to expose whatever flesh they like without being attacked.
What the Toronto official said was outrageous, of course. I recall that famous remark of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir when a curfew for women was mooted to stop sexual attacks. "If there's going to be a curfew, let the men be locked up, not the women", was her sensible response. If SlutWalks need a patron saint, there's your front runner.