Celebrating Death

Roger Ailes, the media maven who built Fox News, died this week.  Today, I came across a Facebook post celebrating his death.  The comments on the post condemned Ailes to hell, cheered at his death, even said 'F**k Roger Ailes.'  To read the reactions, one would think Ailes was a murderous tyrant on the scale of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.  Nope, he was just a Republican media consultant and Cable TV CEO.  This practice of celebrating the death or ruination of political opponents is something that happens almost exclusively on the left.  I have not seen celebratory postings of Anthony Weiner's fall from grace.  Even on the news, when Ailes death is mentioned, there is also the allegation of sexual harassment.  By contrast, when Ted Kennedy died, the media did not bring up Mary Jo Kopeckne.  No, he was the Lion of the Senate and his Republican colleagues spoke well of him in his passing.

 

Charles Krauthammer has noted that Republicans think Democrats are stupid and Democrats think Republicans are evil.  This is an interesting observation from a man who has been in both those camps, notably switching from stupid to evil.  However, one does not celebrate the death of an idiot in the same way one would celebrate the death of an evil person.  Clearly, the reaction of leftists to Ailes death vs. the reaction of conservatives to Kennedy's death shows how accurately this perception predicts.

 

Obviously, half the country is not evil though it is not obvious that half the country is not stupid.  If you are happy because a person with a different political philosophy has died, you need some serious introspection.