The protocol, convention and etiquette for public figure deaths

Scanlan's Monthly cover by Ralph Steadman of Richard Nixon getting punched

When a prominent public figure dies we are guaranteed a steam train of piety and praise. The media will compliment where compliment is due, this is right, but it is wrong for the media to allow any public figure eulogy to go unchecked. There must be a recognition, public airing, examination and learning from the bad, their wrongs and their mistakes, their misrule, misdeeds and misbehaviour. The deceased public figure is not untouchable, the deceased public figure is not a sacred cow; a unifying consensus of reverence does a disservice to the public and to posterity.

I will punch that sacred cow. Yet the establishment wont. Glenn Greenwald calls this The Protocol For Public Figure Deaths.  A convention and etiquette that outlaws honest criticism and imposes a vow of silence. In his obituary for Christopher Hitchens, Glenn Greenwald criticised both the convention of non-criticism and Hitchens himself,  saying here:

"The death this week of Christopher Hitchens and the remarkably undiluted, intense praise lavished on him by media discussions... Hitchens was an extremely controversial, polarizing figure. And particularly over the last decade, he expressed views — not ancillary to his writings but central to them — that were nothing short of repellent. 

Subordinating his brave and intellectually rigorous defense of atheism, Hitchens’ glee over violence, bloodshed, and perpetual war dominated the last decade of his life. Dennis Perrin, a friend and former protégée of Hitchens, described all the way back in 2003 how Hitchens’ virtues as a writer and thinker were fully swamped by his pulsating excitement over war and the Bush/Cheney imperial agenda: 

I can barely read him anymore. His pieces in the Brit tabloid The Mirror and in Slate are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead. His TV appearances show a smug, nasty scold with little tolerance for those who disagree with him. He looks more and more like a Ralph Steadman sketch. And in addition to all this, he’s now revising what he said during the buildup to the Iraq war."

And so:

"Nobody should have to silently watch someone with this history be converted into some sort of universally beloved literary saint. To enshrine him as worthy of unalloyed admiration is to insist that these actions were either themselves commendable or, at worst, insignificant. Nobody who writes about politics for decades will be entirely free of serious error, but how serious the error is, whether it reflects on their character, and whether they came to regret it, are all vital parts of honestly describing and assessing their work. To demand its exclusion is an act of dishonesty.