Beauty, too, can be beastly

A few days ago, fashion savant John Galliano spiraled to his professional doom after a drunken, anti-Semitic row in a Paris bar. Ten years ago, the New Yorker's Michael Specter profiled the ex-Dior creative designer (the firm just fired him and sent him packing to rehab). "It is terrible to watch a man, and his career, implode," he writes today.

Still, Specter spares him nothing:

"Galliano is a deeply talented man, and his early shows helped set fashion on a course it has followed for years, turning the business into a celebrity cult. But his career, and his life, were built on twin pillars of excess and exhibitionism. He was a slave to addiction; those addictions rotated through the years: drugs, sex, alcohol, exercise, and finally, and most damagingly, his own public image. But who could be shocked at his behavior? Who would have expected any other end? [...] He deserves all the blame and ignominy that befalls him. But let’s watch the self-righteous indignation and reserve a little anger for the enablers. Because when it comes to people like John Galliano, there are way too many of them to count."

It's easy to view Galliano – and Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, etc. – as a special byproduct of our celebrity-obsessed culture. In truth, fools have always walked among us, and always will.