“A lot of media outlets are more comfortable extending charity to terrorists than conservatives when they leave this life.”

 
Thread by Drew Holden:

A lot of media outlets are more comfortable extending charity to terrorists than conservatives when they leave this life.

The passing of Rush Limbaugh was the latest reminder. If you don’t believe me, look how his obits stack up to Iranian butcher Qasem Soleimani.

I ask this earnestly:

If your only exposure to each man was @nytimes’s respective obituaries, would you rather be Rush “divisive style of mockery, grievance and denigrating language” Limbaugh or Qassim “master of Iran’s intrigue” Suleimani?

 
It would be one thing if this were just one outlet with an off-color and confrontational obit.

But it wasn’t. I mean. Cmon, @Reuters.

Limbaugh gets distilled down to a “Trump ally” but Soleimani “sought stability”

 
This from @TIME is…something.

 
And it would be wrong not to revisit this @washingtonpost classic (albeit involving a different terrorist).

 
@NBCNews seems a lot more comfortable with the idea that an Iranian military leader responsible for the deaths of American troops might be morally complicated (he fought ISIS!) than Limbaugh (“long history of sexist, homophobic and racist remarks”)

 
I think we can agree that this from @latimes isn’t quite the height of charity.

When Soleimani was killed, we got live updates on his funeral.

 
The more – ahem – partisan outlets also haven’t exactly held back.

Here we have @HuffPost. Limbaugh is the “bigoted king of talk radio” whereas Soleimani was “a figure of national resilience in the face of four decades of U.S. pressure”

 
@esquire is the picture of class and grace, as always.

Also, while I’m sympathetic to the framing about those who led us into Iraq, it is interesting to reflect on the fact that the promised war with Iran never actually happened.

 
Never change, @Slate.

 
What has happened to @newrepublic continues to be a tragedy.

 
The way we talk about the dead matters. Grave dancing leaves a bad taste in peoples’ mouths because, for a long time, we had all kind of agreed that speaking ill of the dead (who can no longer defend themselves) was uncouth.

Apparently, that consensus is gone.

This isn’t meant to be a hagiography of Limbaugh.

But surely the man isn’t as bad as a terrorist, right?

And what blows my mind is that these are the same people who will tie themselves in knots explaining the moral complexity of guys like Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. I mean, this is from @HuffPost.

 
This is from a piece from @TheRoot (in 2018!) explaining why Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam are complicated.

At right, you have their response to Limbaugh’s death.

You mean to tell me that Farrakhan, who compared Jews to termites, deserves more of a pass than Limbaugh?

 
We do a really, really bad job in our society at appropriately sizing our outrage. Things like this only add fuel to the fire, particularly during what’s an emotional time for one camp.

Obituaries aren’t op-eds.

Also, I think part of what throws me is including this kind of thing in a headline/subheader, because it reads like it’s meant to get clicks at the expense of someone’s memory.

It’s just unnecessary. Here’s @CNN with an example of what something better looks like (vs. @nytimes).