While other political leaders retire to lead organisations like the OECD, CARE and ICG, Keating slithers about pimping business deals for dodgy SE Asian plutocrats and former dictators.

What a grub and shameful pox on our polity he is.

a ferocious attack is justified not just to set the record straight, but to maximise the shock value and get peoples attention.

Yep, it sure has shock value on the grieving family knowing they have to confront people who have read such an obit.

The point still holds and therefore includes Hitchens.

You don’t think it’s a nice gesture to a family to leave a hit job until the person is either dust or in the ground?

This is a situation where the writer feels that the deceased has gotten off far too lightly a ferocious attack is justified not just to set the record straight, but to maximise the shock value and get peoples attention.

A day before the guy’s funeral with the “ferocious attack” splattered in the daily to make the family feel better?

Hitchens waited for the body to start the decomposition process before he ran that piece.

This is a situation where the writer feels that the deceased has gotten off far too lightly” a ferocious attack is justified not just to set the record straight, but to maximise the shock value and get people’s attention.

To have the same sentiments between two very different cases seems… silly? :p

When he dies, Martin Bryant will look a saint.

It was Martin Bryant. Essentially the same sentiments apply.

In general I think it is better to wait a little while just out of respect for the feelings of the living, except in extreme cases. After all, Niall, your mother might be any number of horrid things but I’ll bet you would rather not hear about them the week after her demise. On the other hand when (for example) Hicks dies one can just write what a tosser he was and be done. But McGuiness was certainly not so revolting as that.

I think Keating’s attack on Paddy was a dimension more severe than Paddy’s criticism of McClelland and Jim Cairns but even if Paddy’s actions were unwise I think the value of being sympathetic to those who have just passed away is sensible.

A death is accommpanied by a lot of raw feelings among those who survive. It is a reasonable idea to give these survivors a break and to let things settle a little.

Keating’s attack was published the day before Paddy’s funeral – it was obscene – but consistent with everything I understand about this forgettable man.

Wait a while then have a go. Everyone understands that historical truths do not necessarily come while a death is being mourned.

And McGuinness was being used in precisely that way. Howard said something or other that resurrcted the hopefully fading shibboleth of political correctness, and many others used him as a hero of a particular set of conservative
political views. Doesn’t this deserve, for all our sakes, a bit of deflation?

The Chaser thing was, I thought, terrific. And quite brave.

The problem with taking the stick to someone once they died is that it implies you wanted them to die.

What rot. By that logic, being not so nice when they’re alive should be even more off limits, as you’re obviously wishing them dead.

(PJK excluded, as he did write that journalism got smarter just by PP dying.)

Yes, Jacques and as Miss Manners will tell you, it’s also a distinguishing mark of the civil discourse that this blog admirably strives to uphold. The entirely sensible and civilised injunction to “not speak ill of the dead” has always attached specifically to the immediate aftermath of a death when those who loved the departed are assumed to be grieving. It has never been intended as a permanent injunction against offering a balanced biographical commentary and of course, in relation to public figures, it never has – strawman arguments, about a supposed mania for deifying the dead, notwithstanding.

Thus, if a celebrity death occurs via stingray barb, it is boorish and crass to insist a day or so later, in the Guardian, that the deceased thoroughly deserved his death at the barb of “Dasyatidae.” Not only will you sound crass and boorish, youll also sound like a know it all tool for choosing to use the Latin genus, instead of stingray. If you, shortly afterwards, consent to appear on Celebrity Big Brother attired as a 68 year old milk maid, youll remove any doubt about the self-seeking motivation that lies behind this and your every critique – in the unlikely event that there was any doubt about it to begin with.

Interestingly, Paddy McGuinness offered qualified support for his old Sydney Push pals curmudgeonly take, but in more congenial terms:
The real story of Irwin and the stingray is that he got careless. It is a great pity that he came to grief – he was a harmless entertainer – but, except for his family, hardly a tragedy. He knew (or should have known) the risks and he took them knowingly. In the process he made a great deal of money – and good luck to him.

I doubt that PJK will turn up dressed as a milk maid any time soon but its a cautionary tale for societal convention breakers everywhere.

I suspect that this is one of those widely-spread taboos which has a background in early tribal / social life.