As usual these days, when I peruse what is falsely termed “social” media, I find that the only thing worse than their side is our side. Or is it the other way around? Depends on whether it’s Tuesday or Wednesday.
“It is one thing to kick a man when he is down and wholly another to do so when he is forever out,” wrote Robert S. Nussbaum, a New Jersey attorney. Nusbaum was contemplating the wisdom of my old Columbia Spectator friend, Tom Vinciguerra, who, in 2016, penned a now-classic Times etiquette column, How to Speak of the Dead, which more people should read right now.
I raise this, of course, in connection with what I think is a ridiculously repellant and unnecessary response by my fellow progressives to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. He died horribly and unjustly, leaving behind small children and a young wife. He had politics that I disagreed with, but from what I have learned of him in the days since he died, he was the kind of MAGA guy who I probably would have liked, other than the politics. I have a few of those in my life.
“Perhaps the best tactic in these cases is to keep mum,” Tom wrote back then. “Silence, after all, can speak volumes.” He added, “if you feel the need to speak out about a contentious individual, consider this advice from Dean Acheson, the secretary of state in the Truman administration. Asked to comment about [Joseph] McCarthy, he replied, ‘Of the dead, nothing unless good.’ (Although he said it in Latin: ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum.’)”
In the Kirk case, keeping mum is even better advice than it was with respect to McCarthy, because McCarthy died of natural causes. Any attack against Kirk now can seem (as much as the speaker might not intend it) to justify the murder.
A friend of mine wrote on Facebook, “There is a difference between ‘attacking’ and not sitting by while people whitewash (literally) his legacy of hate and divisiveness,” before calling Kirk “a gutter racist fomenter opportunist,” which sure sounds like an attack at best, and a justification of his murder at worst.
Of course people on the right will write approvingly of his politics and of him upon his death. That is exactly what one would expect. That’s their right. Let them mourn. Those of us on the left would have done well to condemn the killing and leave it at that. Or even say nothing. My friend, like most of the progressives expounding publicly on Charlie Kirk, had no obligation to go on social media to comment on this at all.
He could have noted in passing that we progressives disagree with his politics, except that no one needs to be told this, considering that one of us killed him. (After a bit of cathartic gloating about the shooter’s supposed conservative politics, we progressives have been brought down to Earth. Oops.)
A similar thing happened when Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were murdered coming out of the DC Jewish Museum. After of course harumphing that one of course does not condone such a thing, my fellow progressives would then advise their social media readers not to forget that the young couple probably held views that we progressives disagree with! (The two so-called “Zionists” did indeed believe in co-existence between an independent Palestine living alongside Israel in harmony, a progressive no-no these days). That framing is precisely what many watchdog groups warn against. It can be used to justify or excuse harm, or “seem to”, and shift the conversation away from violence.
That is exactly what is happening with Charlie Kirk’s killing. When you condemn the murder in passing and add, But he was terrible, that one word — “but” — speaks volumes. I don’t condone murder, of course. But….
And yes, this has boomeranged around to hit us in the back of the head. It made us look like assholes, and looking like assholes was a big reason (but not the only reason) that we lost in 2024. It also gave the president a weapon to use against us, and the public won’t be there to defend us when he does. It hurt us. Why do something that hurts us?
Back to Tom’s wisdom. He was writing in the pre-Trump era, January 2016, when the controversy of the day was a nasty column by Gersh Kuntzman in the Daily News, which insulted Glenn Frey just after he died. In the column, Tom evaluated the difference between public and private deaths, and quoted Christopher Hitchens and Glenn Greenwald (both of whom loved to savage the recently deceased), before he landed on this sensible piece of advice:
“Assuming that truth will ultimately prevail,” Tom wrote, “it probably can’t hurt to pause before speaking too ill or too well of certain dead, lest we embarrass ourselves. As my friend put it, ‘Hey, it’s O.K. to not like the Eagles. It’s also O.K. to shut up about it for a few days when one of them dies.’ ”
^^^
This column is by Steven S. Drachman, a novelist.
Image design: Kalyee Srithnam.