You shouldn't speak ill of the dead like this. It is uncouth and crass for all sorts of reasons. It doesn't mean you need to forget or ignore it, it just means... today is not the day. More days will come.
It is also a simple application of the Golden Rule; you would not care for everyone around you to take your death as an opportunity to slag you, neither should you do it to you other fellow humans, all condemned to die one day as well.
There will be more days. It doesn't have to be done today.
if I ever turn into someone who gets a reputation for molesting young college students drag me all you want, hell rent a billboard for all I care and chuck my remains into the trashcan.
If I ever figured out that one of my family members engaged in behaviour like this I would not mind it one single bit if their accusers spoke about it the day they died, the only thing I'd be sad about is that I didn't know sooner.
>If I ever figured out that one of my family members engaged in behaviour like this I would not mind it one single bit if their accusers spoke about it the day they died, the only thing I'd be sad about is that I didn't know sooner.
He touched a woman's thigh and then died.
And if people are speaking ill of the dead it's highly likely that people were speaking ill of them before they died too, so any 'ill-speak' is hardly likely to be news to them.
(I'm speaking from principle here; I personally have nothing ill to say about Harold Bloom).
Speaking ill of the dead at all is generally not good because the person is no longer able to defend their reputation, and no remedy can be made. The dead is no longer in a position of power to be removed, nor can they improve themselves out of remorse. So of something ill is to be said, saying it after death is too late, not too soon.
"Too soon" is problematic because you are using a death as an opportunity to amplify your own message, and because it can amplify the grief of those left behind.
Unless you truly believed that if we were to go through your life with a fine toothed comb, nobody could find anything at all objectionable?
We should remember people as they were in totality. That means recognizing that people are human, and humans can be remarkably awful to some while putting on a good face to others.
And yes, I'm including victims who felt they had something to lose. Those are the claims someone has the greatest interest in defending themselves against.
“If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.”
I guess I’m arguing that the right words are a function of the context.
And it's polite. There's nothing wrong with keeping these thoughts to yourself. With rare exception, it certainly doesn't harm anyone.
But when a person leaves this world, they take all their good and all their bad with them -- I think it's acceptable to acknowledge what we are left with. To some, the striking acknowledgement is that we are one harasser less.
The conversation will naturally steer towards the good if it outweighs the bad. Perhaps I'm being too insensitive; Those are my thoughts for the moment, anyway.
When we are all thinking about them and their legacy is an opportune time to discuss the underlying issues. How else can we accurately remember the dead, and learn from their actions?