I wholeheartedly agree with Mark Kobzik that criticism of the powerful should not cease after they’re dead. But it seems as though he forgot to mention on Monday any terrible person who wasn’t a liberal bugbear. In the spirit of jogging the memory, then:
Senator Robert Byrd was the longest-serving man in the Senate when he died, a Democratic Party icon. He was also a former exalted cyclops of the Klu Klux Klan. Ted Kennedy – a Democratic senator of even greater prestige – killed a girl while drunk-driving in what became known as the Chappaquiddick Incident. (Both Senators received high state honors upon death.) Chistopher Hitchens, whom Kobzik lauds briefly, was an avid Islamophobe who supported the invasion of Iraq on the basis of its people’s religion.
Maybe we should criticize the powerful, not only after they’re dead, but even if they played for “our” team.