Gilligan said:
I had nightmares about clowns in the gutters when IT was first published.
Maybe I shouldn't have read it three times over the years.
He's a great author. He just needs to keep his politics to himself.
This is one big casualty, or maybe some would say perk, of modern communications and social media. All the prominent people who would have been kept on a pedestal decades and centuries ago with a professionally manicured image are now transparent as common people, for better or worse. They're just as capable of being petty and idiotic and laughable as anyone else.
I grew up reading a bunch of his books and appreciate many of the movies and shows based on his stories but he's a weirdo for sure, and seemingly very angry. But at the same time if I started eliminating all the books and shows and movies and albums and so on of people I disagreed with politically or socially that would suck. So I normally try to just avoid paying attention to them outside of whatever they produce.
I think it's part of the same reason we'll never again have movie stars like the golden age of Hollywood or rock stars like the 60s and 70s and 80s, everybody is just so overexposed and in our faces every day, right down to the most trivial of things. There's no mystique to anything or anyone anymore. Which, again, might be preferable for some.