Monday, April 8, 2013

Dancing on Graves for Fun and Profit


Do not speak ill of the dead, we’re told.

Why not?

The dead are beyond the reach of my slings and arrows. More dangerous, to my mind is the whitewashing of misdeeds done by the recently deceased.

I will agree that Westboro Baptist style celebration at the death of young men and women taken too soon is offensive to the grieving family. It is insensitive and hateful.

But if a person dies in the fullness of time, and that person’s acts were harmful to many, I don’t see why a little fist pump is so bad a thing. If an old, miserable dick dies, I think it’s fine to be happy that the world is a bit less dickish.

Margaret Thatcher began her reign of evil by abolishing free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven. Turning back Vietnamese refugees, because of “concerns” about the number of Asian immigrants, demolishing labor unions, privatizing services, making the first cuts to the NHS, and the utter tone deaf awfulness of her response to the crisis in Northern Ireland all show a callus disregard of basic human dignity and needs of anyone not wealthy and English.

I won’t shed a tear at the end of a life, when countless thousands of more innocent lives were destroyed or made harder by policies she championed.       

To show my UK friends that it’s not a matter of national identity, I assure everyone I’m shining my tap shoes for dancing on the graves of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney as well.

So I will happily accept criticism of my comments and attitude, while echoing the sentiments of Labor MP George Galloway who tweeted “Tramp the dirt down.”       




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