"Libel of the dead is not an offence known to our law," read the 1887 court decision that dismissed a defamation of the dead suit. It continued, "The dead have no rights and can suffer no wrongs." That hasn't remained an absolute in the last 121 years, but the line on too much or too soon is still pretty difficult to cross.
Every day that I awaken to the obituary of one who was our political enemy in life, I know that the knives are out at Daily Kos, and it was no different this morning when I saw that Tony Snow has lost his battle with cancer.
Maybe its just age that is catching up with me. In my twenties I reveled in being a Front Page style character whom scandal made glow all over and a grisly murder sent packing merrily off with the other ghouls and minions of the newsroom to the nearest bar.
Or maybe its that the speed of technology has changed the comic timing of sarcastic reportage and comment on the shuffling off of mortal coils. When "two bits" follows "shave and a haircut" too closely the meaning gets lost. Maybe that's why, when the death of a Helms or a Falwell produces an immediate chorus of Louis Armstrong's You Rascal, You here at the great orange satan, I'm sad not only for the family who lost someone whom they loved but we couldn't. I'm sad for us, too.
As stewards of a belief system, as advocates for a change from conservatism, we have a responsibility to show that our policies and direction is well thought out, and rises from a well of experience and wisdom.
But when we take cheap shots at people who can no longer defend themselves, and who usually decided in their declining days, weeks, or months, that they were wrong about what they thought was important and tried to make up for lost time, we send a message to those we're trying to convert that we really aren't that experienced, or smart, or compassionate.
We've seen our administration lose the high moral ground on torture, on disaster relief, on environmental stewardship and we claim we can rebuild that. Many of those we've lost recently were in our sights because they had no compassion, and we owe their memory more. Not because their actions in life made them deserving of it, but because our beliefs and what we claim is our higher purpose demand it of us.
I know restraint is difficult, especially when the targets are so easy to hit. Its always more fun to trash something flawed than to try and find its good points. It was no doubt difficult for the "Teddy Bare" crowd to stand for the great Ted Kennedy when he put Medicare of others above his own recovery.
For many of these dearly departed, the good points can be hard to find. There's no legal requirement that we be nice or civil. But finding the minimum the law requires and then hugging it and attacking mercilessly is everything that's wrong with the people in power. The dead may not be able to suffer wrongs but when we're classless in our comments, we're really wronging ourselves.