"de mortuis nil nisi bonum"
Latin for "Don't speak ill of the dead"
So lets clear that up first, I'm not going to speak ill of John Sidney McCain rather what makes his death a benchmark for not how to conduct yourself when you are terminally ill and you know you're going to die.
There's a lot of swirl (Keith Larson's wonderful phrase @TheLarsonPage) around John McCain's death, and as such it has become a literal pissing contest rather than a carefully planned out corrorgraphed event .
The "Mainstream Media" not surprisingly is fawning all over John McCain, hyperventilating themselves to honor the dearly departed and to disparage Donald Trump. Truth is that had MSM indulged in this sort of "humpfest" during McCain's 2008 presidential run we would be burying our former President and not a Senator.
Flag Gate:
The protocol for our National Ensign is simple, the flag is lowered to half staff on the day of a (house or Senate) member's death and remains at half staff until the end of the following day. So via the SOP the White House staff did just that. And because the White House flag is raised 24/7/365 at exactly 12:01 am Monday morning the flag went back up. Not until Trump signed the Presidential order did the flag return to "Half Staff".
Did Trump not sign the order until the afternoon of the 27th deliberately? Maybe, but the delay doesn't matter, what does matter is that social media tried spreading the rumor that the flag wasn't re-lowered for McCain but rather Neil Simon.
The MSM didn't bother to explain the protocol either.
During the last 7 months of his life McCain spent a crazy amount of time slamming Donald Trump and it was totally unnecessary. Trump does enough damage to himself daily and yet, it doesn't seem to matter, I guess that alone drove McCain mad.
You don't publicly "uninvite" people to your funeral. You just don't invite them. This act alone screams JV, mean girls and big brother house as well as survivor island. I'm not inviting you to my funeral, countered with "I wasn't going to come anyway". What is worse than one 3 year old? two 3 year olds.
It is painfully clear that tweets from @SenJohnMcCain were not his doing. Hard to say what his real thinking was during the last months of his life.
1 comment:
I once asked Christopher Hitchens (via email), who was notorious for savaging people in print when their deaths were announced, about his attitude toward de mortuis nil nisi bonum.
His response, occasioned by the death of televangelist Jerry Falwell:
In my view the de mortuis "tradition" is about ten seconds old and derives perhaps from the Victorian era (see the way the London Times rubbished King George III or was it IV on his demise). There are two alternatives in the case of Falwell, say. The first is that he fucking dies and that only nice things are said. Obviously intolerable. The second is that he fucking dies and that those who are glad to hear it get asked their opinion as well. In such a case, why not be candid?
Had I died this week, all the Christian Coalition nutbags would have said I was asking for it and was now in hell. I know this because of what they say while I am still alive. That being the case, I need no justification for outdoing them in charitable comment.
Apologies for the profanity, but the email exchange occurred in the wee hours and Hitch had probably been hitting the Johnny Walker Black pretty hard, as was his custom.
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