In the good old days when print was king, nobody spoke ill of the dead, and if someone did, nobody else would know about until the obituaries came out the next day. As we all know, with the rise of the blogosphere things have changed; still, the death of Jerry Falwell today seems to have set new heights in terms of both haste and venom. Here is a sampling:
The friendly folk at Wonkette are typical: “At a time like this, people deserve sympathy and good wishes … except for Falwell,” the blog notes. “Over his long career as a vile televangelist building an empire of bigotry from the donations of poor people, Falwell has supported South African apartheid, called AIDS an invention of Jesus to punish gays, attacked Martin Luther King and U.S. civil rights, and blamed 9/11 on feminists and homosexuals.”