Disrespecting the Recently Dead is Never Cool
by Joey Manley
As a good liberal, I find it disturbing that the people who represent “my side” in national and international political media often feel the urge to kick recently-dead conservative corpses in the head. It bothered me when people did this to that B. C. cartoonist guy, and it bothers me when people do it to Jerry Falwell. As much as I agree with a lot of what Christopher Hitchens says in the YouTube video below, I wonder if now is the best time. I’m pretty sure it isn’t. There are important points to be made about religion, politics, and so on. Ragging on the recently-deceased interferes with the ability to make those points, and be heard, without looking like a mean obsessive. Just my opinion. Instead of seeing Hitchens go off on Falwell, I’d rather see the airtime, and the vitriol, directed at somebody who’s still alive, and who is still affecting public policy in a way that Falwell hasn’t, really, in years — Pat Robertson, say, or James Dobson. Ah well.
That said, I did laugh several years ago, when The Onion interviewed the then-recently-deceased Mother Theresa — in Hell. Sometimes humor can be so over-the-top that being offended is part of the enjoyment, I guess.
Hitchens, below, isn’t very funny, and isn’t trying to be. If he had been, maybe I wouldn’t have minded. I can tell you this: I seriously doubt he changed anybody’s mind about Falwell. And if he wasn’t trying to do that, what was the point? Oh. Wait. I know. It was to sell his new book. Never mind.
May 17th, 2007 at 11:37 am
As a good moderate, it bothers me too. Particularly since a lot of the things people say about Falwell aren’t even true. Don’t get me wrong — I was never a fan of that guy. But for instance, the whole Teletubbies thing. He was at best tangentially related to saying Tinky Winky is a gay symbol, and when people sent him Tinky Winky dolls in an attempt, I guess, to make him uncomfortable, he gave them to his grandkids.
Anyway the dude was pretty terrible in a bunch of ways, but he hasn’t been much of a threat in a while. Let him rest.
May 17th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Joey, you can rest easy: Hitchens hasn’t been a Liberal in years.
I haven’t read much of his writing lately, but he was a big supporter of that whole Neo-Con Pax Americana thing in the early days of Gulf War II. (I’m guessing that unless he’s been living in a spider-hole outside of Basra, he might have changed his tune a bit…)
May 17th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
He blames Bush for screwing it up, and is still a liberal as long as you consider people like LBJ, FDR, Truman, Bill Richardson, Joe Lieberman, or Hillary Clinton liberals. I would not equate dove with liberal. pat Buchannan was one of the biggest opponents of Iraq from the get go.
May 17th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Hitchens is definitely still on the left — my understanding of his justification for supporting the war in Iraq (standing up against the dictatorial fascism of the religious zealots in the region) sounds like a leftist justification to me, even though I think I’ve heard Bush use it a time or two, come to think of it. Hm.
May 17th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
No comment on the video, because I haven’t watched it, but I think it is important that we get an accurate portrayal of people at all times, and that of course includes right after they die. If talk shows are going to discuss Jerry Falwell right after his death, they’d better not have nothing but guests in love with the man.
I’m not sure whther I’ll be doing a Jerry Falwell death comic, but if I did I’d do it now rather than next month or year. Maybe I’ll blame Falwell’s death on the pagans, the abortionists, the feminists, the gays, the lesbians, and the ACLU? Or that he was destroyed by God and now there is celebration in heaven? Or maybe Bill Clinton had him killed just like he did Vince Foster?
May 17th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I have to agree with Eric that honesty is important–it would be wrong to pretend that Falwell wasn’t a bad person just because he’s so recently dead. He said and did terrible things, and those terrible things are the legacy he leaves behind. That needs to be acknowledged.
That said, there’s a considerable difference between being honest and simply making a show out of spitting on a man’s grave. The Hitchens video rubbed me the wrong way for that reason–however accurate his points may have been, he clearly intentionally phrased them in the most hostile manner possible. It smacked more of spectacle than honesty. Which isn’t to say I think he was being insincere–he seems to believe what he says. But the honesty felt like a secondary concern to selling books. Especially considering the way he kept cutting off the interviewer to wedge in one more clever jab.
And, similar to what Joey said at the start, it doesn’t do liberals any favors to have our opinions presented by a pompous, unsympathetic windbag. He just comes off as an O’Reilley for the left.
May 17th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I agree with both of you.
But just to clarify, Eric: obsequiously feting the man who just died, just because he just died, is out of the question — his legacy does need to be discussed in full, especially right now when people are thinking most about him and what his life means. It’s not the content of Hitchens’ remarks so much as the deeply personal tone and gleefully mean way in which he phrases them. Complete disagreement with, and even outraged opposition to, everything a recently-dead person stands for can be achieved without doing what Hitchens did. Like I said in my post, humor could have made a difference, for example. I expect if I had been watching cable news over the past few days, I’d have been more in the mood for something like this, though — I can only imagine. I do remember Reagan’s death, after all, and the sickening fawning that accompanied it. James’ cartoon, where he was yelling “Fuck Reagan” at the TV that week, didn’t strike me as mean-spirited, but, then, I know James, and I, too, was sick of the fawning. So there’s that, too.
May 17th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
We were glad when the Ayatollah died. Why should we be respectful over the deaths of his Christian peer?
May 17th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Well, that’s just it Bill — I’m not glad when anybody dies. At least, I try not to be. I’m certainly glad that these people are separated from their power and influence, but death itself shouldn’t be celebrated.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Bill, my point is that sneering at the death of somebody like Jerry Falwell makes it less likely, not more, that people who don’t agree with me today will agree with me someday. I am not of the opinion that those who disagree with me politically, even on my fundamental human rights (and there are lots of those in the US, since I’m a gay man), are always irredeemably evil. I’d rather keep lines of dialogue open so that I can convince them of my position at some point. There’s always a chance we can turn them around, as long as we’re not such hateful assholes to them that they don’t want to listen to us anymore.
May 18th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Hitchens traffics in vitriol to make a living. He is never fair, or compassionate, or nice to those who disagree with him. That said, I had caught most of the coverage of Falwell the day and day after he died, much of it comprised of the obsequiousness and glossing over (”He stuck to his convictions, etc.”) that people use when they can’t think of anything nice to say. Hitchens didn’t feel Falwell was worth respect, and I would have a hard time arguing with him about that. He was a charlatan who exploited fear and ignorance to enrich himself and serve a hateful ideology. Hitchens’ response would have more credibility if he didn’t talk like that all the time.
May 18th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Joey, you’re a lot more optimistic about the species than I am. I don;t think any amount of reasoned dialog will change a Falwell-like creep. The only thing you can do is keep a distance, defend yourself when needed, and hope they hang themselves with their own nastiness like Ted Haggard did.
Alexander, I think death is the ultimate leveler. With his death, Falwell received the justice he managed to avoid in his life. Now he’s nothing but worm food.
May 18th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Falwell, and the rest of the right-wing cable network talking heads, are probably irredeemable. However, people like my Aunt Bonnie, who vaguely thinks of herself as a Christian and vaguely thinks of herself as a conservative (and would be offended by that patronizing but truthful characterization of the depth of her convictions), and who has a vague but ill-informed respect for Falwell, is reachable, if we comport ourselves. I hope. And those people, not the radical acolytes, but the unthinking, vague hangers-on, are the ones who serve as the real power base.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Bill, I couldn’t disagree more — by going to his death with his convictions still intact, he avoided justice entirely. Sure he’s dead, but so we all will be eventually. Like you said, it’s the great leveler–the good and the bad are punished equally (or almost equally–many of us don’t get to live to such a ripe old age as Falwell did). Living with self-knowledge is the only real justice there can be, and he never faced it. So in that sense, he won.
May 18th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Yeah, I can’t see how dying comfortable at an old age can really be counted as any sort of special justice for Falwell. It’s probably the best anyone can hope for, really.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Of course I would have preferred his utter disgrace and humiliation while he was alive, but if his ideas and beliefs in a god being reduced to worm chow is all we got, then that’s what I’ll take.
Like I said Joey, you’re a lot more optimistic about people than I am.