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by VLM 2304 days ago
Technically he's not dead, he's just been downsized to increase shareholder value.
2 comments

Public figures are still human, with families...
This is a popular excuse when horrible people are called out for what they are. "Won't someone please think of the children".

Well, it's they themselves that should have thought of their families. It's not our fault when we say exactly what they were.

Calling out, in my book, requires an intelligent, thoughtful treatment of the behavior and subject.

GP took a cheap quip at a dead man, for laughs and karma.

And just because he was (by all accounts) an asshole, that flies? And doesn't just fly, but inspires righteous indignation that anyone would feel it's disrespectful?

Be the change you want in the world.

I'll grant you the families part.
Yeah, I have a hard time dancing on a persons grave. Unless they've done something totally evil, they should be afforded some respect. That said, hearing about Limbaugh's condition tested my ability to live by that principle.
> Unless they've done something totally evil

Well, according to a comment upthread:

> In upstate New York he held back for over a decade any effort to mitigate legacy PCB pollution from GE’s mostly closed factories there. He funded AstroTurf organizations and downplayed research showing connections between PCB pollution and health problems.

Yeah. That qualifies as evil in my book.
A la David Cameron feeling merely "privileged pain" upon the death of his son
If you want nice things to be said when you pass then do good things for people in your life.

It’s important to be kind to all, but it’s also important to give people space to grieve.

This is exactly GP's point.
So what?
Wow Fidel Castro didn't even get this bad of a response:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041886

I guess as long as you're a Republican you're free game, even in death.

To be fair, most commenters on Hacker News are more likely to have suffered the detrimental effects of Jack Welch's acts and philosophy than the effects of Fidel Castro's rule. Not every moral judgment needs to be made on pure global utilitarian principles
Wow. Reading just the top comment there and then the responses in this thread is pretty eye opening.

But then again - "I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan."

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html