About one such individual, a corrupting influence in the world of theater, I wrote:
I feel sorry for the man and for those bereaved that knew him, but I believe that his sort of "pay to play" purveyor has been an unmitigated disaster to the American theater. Accusation of harboring "sour grapes" has been levelled against me in the past for expressing this kind of view, but the idea that I should have to pay thousands of dollars just to possibly see a play produced is unconscionable. Even by this laudatory article you can see that he promoted an utterly fallacious idea about about what theater is or—more pointedly—how drama operates. The play (script) is not something done by a roomful of people; the playwright gives it over to them to make what they will of it. Hence the idea of specialization or even of expertise: each contributor (to what finally appears on the stage) has his own special function and there are severe—essentially uncrossable—demarcations between them. This is not to undermine collaboration; this is the essence of collaboration.
It would be a futile exercise (that is to say, pointless) to dismantle all of this article's "learned things" and demonstrate why they are wrong (in some cases exactly wrong), but one can only hope that the creative ferment or enthusiasm that he is said to have instilled in large numbers of people will have a positive effect in the long run. I don't generally endorse pablum peddlars but at least he was not working on Wall Street.