Regardless of your opinion on Elon, I don't see the issue. I'd even argue that re-adding the checkmark to dead celebrates is actually respectful, since they are unable to subscribe but they are official accounts who historically were "verified."
The issue with the false notations that people are subscribers (whether its dead celebrities, live celebrities, organizations, or whatever—the specific example of the many Twitter has done in this rollout doesn’t matter) is false endorsement, which aside from being deceptive and unethical is a violation of federal law (the Lanham Act.)
There’s additional issues that come from the fact these are, for organizations (gold check), bypassing verification as well as payment, but the false endorsement one is the most general issue. Bypassing verification isn’t aj issue with Blue largely because Blue verification is meaningless.
I really hate this culture of "cancel person X" and if you use anything "person X" has made, your a racist/bigot/whatever.
This whole blue check politic statement you are making is a strawman.
Edit: This applies in reverse as well. There are definitely fans/admirers of Elon who subscribed immediately as a show of support. But I admit all of this is anecdata, I don't have numbers on how widespread it is.
Of course, in addition to being meaningless, that’s also false in the case of the involuntary Blue accounts. But the absence of verification is a bigger deal with the involuntary gold checks.