HN had a big memorial thread when Monty Python's Terry Jones died, but kept deleting/flagging anything similar for Kobe Bryant at the same time. Its logic around this is not consistent.
I can't find the link to the poll now, maybe someone will post it, but my takeaway was that the HN audience is 90%+ white sys male. I'd expect tending toward the higher income also, but the poll didn't include that info.