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.”

[ Could the NYT come off any more fucking stodgy and pretentious? "The good old days when print was king" my ass. I'm not saying I don't miss certain things about those days, like journalistic integrity and well conducted research, but crimony. Talk about self serving crap. I thought the Times was better than that. As for the premise, it's also stupid. People have always spoken ill of the dead in certain forums, particularly when the person who died was a fucking intolerant, hypocritical asshole. The fact that the web now shows us that hardly bothers me. I'm not saying everyone should just go free-for-all and toss respect out the window, but there's a time and a place for haste and venom, and I think the Times sounds antiquated when they argue for a return to a time when everything was better. Not to mention the fact that I don't think that time has ever existed. Everytime i hear "the good old days" utterered seriously I cringe. It's a myth, and it always has been. -k]

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