Civility's important. But...

Steyn gets it right (as usual)...

We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation — or, at any rate, its “mainstream” media culture — declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists.

There's a great scene from the first episode of Bochco's Murder One, in which a drunk in a bar makes a comment to Daniel Benzali's Theodore Hoffman. And Hoffman turns to him and says:

"Do you think anyone in this bar believes you've got a head of hair? We all know that's a comb-over. But until you get so obnoxious that you forfeit your right to civil treatment, no one in here points it out...Civility's important. That's why no one in here called you a self-deceiving fool until you opened your drunken mouth."

I was willing to just let the Kennedy stuff go. Until it go so obnoxious that it required comment. You want to talk about how his was a historic run, how he was important in getting a lot of (to my mind noxious) legislation passed, fine. His term was historic, he was a key part of the government for the past 40 years. You want to say that he was good to his kids and his nieces and nephews, well, maybe that's true, too. Maybe it's not his fault that his kids are so screwed up. But don't tell me what a great guy he was when no one was watching, because there's just far too much evidence to the contrary, and as the hagiography drags into the fourth day, someone needs to mention it...