Um. My gut reaction is that for me it's a couple - but with explanatory footnotes! I think the metaphor fails at that point :-)

What you say makes a lot of sense; with a dead artist, if I buy a book of poems by Ezra Pound, I'm not supporting his anti-Semitic views - and if I buy a collection of Tom Jefferson's writings the money isn't going to support a plantation run on slave labor. But if I buy a book by James Dobson, profits may well go into Focus on the Family.