Polanski’s crime – and all its attendant issues of patriarchy, entitlement, and the like – is clearly a flashpoint for a great deal of emotion. But it is incumbent upon writers especially to take a step back from their emotional reactions to a situation and try to come to grips with the personages involved, in all their muddiness and humanity. Perhaps then, they would be able to see Polanski for what he is: a flawed, scarred, imperfect human being. A man who committed an unquestionably bad act. But the writer’s impulse, rather than jumping on a condemnatory emotional bandwagon, should be an attempt to understand that bad act. If artists abdicate this responsibility, who will be left to take it up?

On Beattie’s own blog, commenters have taken him to task for his stance, and I don’t disagree with them. No one, artist or otherwise, is duty-bound to feel empathy for anyone. I believe empathy to be a virtuous quality, of course, and I try to excercise it in my own life. I’ll even say “boy, it probably sucks to be Roman Polanski right now.” But empathy applied always and everywhere, to everyone, regardless of their conduct, renders it meaningless.

The writer’s duty — whether journalist, novelist, poet, the guy who writes the riddles on the back of the cereal box — is not empathy but judgment. Not in the sense of being judgmental, but in the sense of surveying the many possible aesthetic, philosophical, political, and moral choices open to her, and making decisions (about personal conduct, beauty, political stances, and so on) for considered, meaningful reasons.

I’ve read plenty about Roman Polanski in the last few days, and here’s what I think: he was an intermittently gifted filmmaker who has made a truckload of abhorrent personal choices, which include but are not limited to the rape of a 13-year-old girl, for which he willfully evaded responsibility for decades, all of which shows a moral compass dangerously askew. I don’t quite understand why the authorities picked him up now, but it was the right thing to do 32 years ago and it’s the right thing now.

I have plenty of empathy in the Roman Polanski case. It’s for his victim.

Maisonneuve has always marched to the beat of a different drummer, which is why we, and thousands of other readers, like reading it. Personally, I always liked the simplicity of the old covers, but I’m not going to dwell on the past. I’m not in love with the new cover design, but the changes inside the magazine are great. And Maisy now definitely looks unlike anything else you’ll see on newsstands—almost always a plus.

So when my copy of the Summer 2009 issue arrived in my mailbox yesterday, I flipped to the letters page to see what the feedback on the new look had been. And boy, was there a letter:

Wow. That is one of the ugliest magazine covers I have ever seen. It looks like a 1978 copy of This Magazine. After reading your description of the changes it is hard to believe that so much thought could go into something so drab. Good thing I have a subscription becuase this cover would turn me off if I saw it on the stands. But the inside is as good as ever. I especially like reading writers that I don’t see in other magazines.

—Scott Dobson, Toronto

Behold: This Magazine, 1978.

Oh, SNAP. A 1978 copy of This Magazine! Which is, admittedly, not about to win any beauty contests, as you can see from the March 1978 cover above. But that was 30 years ago, and while we’re still beautiful on the inside, This has also had some work done recently and we want to show it off. So: attention, Scott Dobson! Contact me (editor at thismagazine dot ca) and we’ll give you a free one-year subscription to This Magazine, 2009 incarnation. Do you know Scott Dobson? Are you Scott Dobson? Let the word go forth.

UPDATE: Meet Scott Dobson!

A helpful tipster out there put us in touch with Scott, who comments below on the This Magazine of his youth, in which we find ourselves in pretty awesome company: “In chronological order the most important things to me in the 70’s were Bobby Orr, Evel Knievel, Monty Python, and THIS magazine.” Thanks Scott — that free subscription will be in the mail soon.