Open and critical

If you don't want to read, listen to or watch something because of its anti-Semitic content, then that's your right. But an organized boycott of The Merchant of Venice is not, in my view, something worth doing. It's Shakespeare and he's not going to go away - for the good reason that he was a writer of monumental genius. It is better to make the argument for why, like all other forms of racist prejudice, anti-Semitic stereotypes matter wherever they are found. A work can be of value even if it contains them, and we would shut ourselves off from much of value if we were to boycott everything containing racist stereotypes or themes. (Via Linda.)