Picasso was a highly chauvinist “male genius”. So was Einstein. That is not to defend them — I think that kind of behavior is horrible. But your evidence for the thesis that “no one misses the geniuses who are assholes” does not prove that we actually don’t miss out on what those geniuses might have produced.

You wrote, “no one has bemoaned the lack of his voice or work.” I don’t follow Mark Halperin, so my comments are not about him in particular; but perhaps people don’t miss something because they don’t know what they don’t know. Average people cannot guess what geniuses will do — if they could, they would all be geniuses.

Geniuses are that because they do the unexpected. No one misses what they don’t expect when it doesn’t arrive. If Einstein had not produced General Relativity, no one would have said, “Where’s GR?” If Picasso had not painted La Guernica, no one would have said, “Where’s La Guernica?” They simply would have focused on the mediocre paintings that were being produced.

So your thesis is wrong, Jessica, even though I agree with the sentiment: bad behavior should not be tolerated. Steve Jobs was notorious for being an asshole — not just to women, but to everyone. But he was able to see things that others could not see — not because he was a man, or because he was an asshole, but because he was a genius about the tech market.

If we shut down such people, we will miss out— we just won’t know it. I am not saying we should not shut them down, but we should be honest with ourselves about the cost.