Don't speak ill
...of the dead. Isn't that the right thing to do? Maybe it's just me. I don't know. At least give them time to get cold eh? Never in my life would I characterize this as 'right wing' opinion-- although my fellow bloggers on the right take every single leftist post to characterize the entire liberal population-- I'll just say, this guy (and his commentors) needs to step away from his blog and re-enter humanity.
Peter Jennings is dead, may he rest in peace. Lest we forget, however, while he was alive Peter Jennings did considerable damage to the cause of civilization and human deceny by his sympathy for Jew-hating terrorists and their supporters.
It only gets worse in the comments:
Peter Jennings’ on screen persona was that of a smug, superior, know it all. He evidenced a barely hidden smirk on his face in confronting any point of view not similar to his or his employers. He wallowed in moral equivalency,and he brought one more new low to post-modern journalistic endeavors.
He expressed his first humanity in his reporting of the 911 attack. For this single efort he gets no more than an honored boot on his grave-the same symbolic honor given Benedict Arnold for the wound he took Before he betrayed America. Jennings goes down in American history as another talking Canadian head for whom makeup and the right camera angle were paramount. I wont be a hypocrite and shed tears at his passing. I was revulsed by him when he was alive and am indifferent to him in death.
posted by Katinula | 4:39 PM
4 Comments:
I don't have any particular beef with Jennings.
However, I do wonder if the sentiment don't speak ill of the dead applies very well to public figures.
There is a difference between personal and public life and when a public figure dies, his supporters/admirers/philosophical allies use that event as a means to not only laud the person, but advance their cause. No better example of this exists in recent times than Reagan's death last year.
Certainly in the face of this praise, often not just for a person but for a philosophy, a critique or disagreement with the philosophy that is being publicly praised is not beyond the pale.
How many of those who are criticizing Horowitz for speaking this way of Jennings resisted the urge to criticize Reagan when he died?
Honestly don't know...and pretty much don't care. Common decency calls for at least a funeral maybe to happen before the shit-talking begins. But then again, it seems common decency is hard to find these days.
Reagans's death was the perfect example, you are right. I thought the same thing of those who criticized Reagan before he was even in the ground.
I can see your point, but if we are going to approve of lionizing of the dead, and the philosophy they held, then it seems we have to allow, or at least not too strongly condemn, people who have other opinions.
Jennings is being held up, for example, as the last best thing of an era that is now gone, when honest and unbiased journalism prevailed.
Implicit in that lionizing, is criticism of others (CNN and especially Fox News.)
Does the fact that Jennings dies recently mean that only one side of this debate is acceptable to be heard?
I don't know. I have some sympathy for your position, and the idea of decorum, but it is also clear that sometimes people use the recently dead to advance their ideology, and it is unfair to say that it cannot be countered.
When Reagan died, many conservatives used that death to trumpet the merits of their entire philosophy and equate conservatism with all that was good. Certainly others chose to denigrate Reagan, which was as you point out unseemly, but the using of his death as a promotional tool was just as unseemly and prompted that reaction.
Would it be so hard to just be silent for a bit when someone dies? As my "mum" would say, if ya' can't say somethin'nice, don't say nuthin' at alll. I critics would stand still very long and listen to their own hearts beating, they would become aware that we all stand looking over the abyss. It is that fear that keeps people jabbering. But we're all the same, the famous, the infamous, and the rest of us. Thanks, Katinula.
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