Old As Time

by digby

As we gird ourselves for the inevitable caterwauling from the right about how the horrible liberals are politicizing Teddy’s death, you should read Aimai’s meditation on death rituals and their meaning. An excerpt:

I don’t fault Republicans for having their own heroes, or for using funerals and memorials as places to gin up support for Republican policies. I don’t even fault them for using the imagery of 9/11 and its victims over and over again to rally support for their wars and their depredations. There’s nothing wrong with that. Waving the bloody shirt has a long history and its not always the wrong thing to do. I disagree with the policies but not with the notion that we use social occasions to promote social goals. I wish they were honest enough to acknowledge the fact that we all do the same thing: we celebrate that which we think is good, we fight for the continuance of policies that we want to see continued, and we use the lives and the deaths of our members to further those policies. Its human. Its Civil. Its Social. Its Public. These aren’t dirty words and they don’t dirty the memory of the deceased.

Now take a deep breath and get ready for the Wellstoning.

Update: Here we go:

LIMBAUGH: So I predicted — well, anybody could have predicted this. We know these people like the back of our hands. Well, it doesn’t matter. I predicted it, and I caught, you know, all kinds of grief for it out there.

[…]

LIMBAUGH: I’m being dead serious here. I think it would be a tremendous disservice to come up with a health care bill that we have now in the House and is floating around the Senate, the one that Obama’s talking about, where the government is going to decide whether people like Ted Kennedy get to go through every aspect of survival that he did. Exercise their spirit. He had a spirit for life; he wanted to live. He did not want to die.

Now, Obama has said, well, we can’t look at that, because costs — looking at someone’s spirit, will to live. Well, Ted Kennedy’s spirit was to live, and he chose to exercise as many options were available to him to prolong his life. And to put his name on a health care bill that denies that to other people and say we’re doing this in his memory is hypocrisy, and it would be insulting to his memory.

[…]

LIMBAUGH: I doubt that any of this will have an effect on anybody because passing the bill is what’s first and foremost on the president’s mind and on the Democrats’ mind. And sadly, Senator Kennedy now becomes a pawn. His death becomes something they can use to facilitate a political aim. And they will be saying things and doing things claiming this is what he wanted, this is what he inspired.

[…]

LIMBAUGH: Well. I’ll tell ya what, I’m a little uncomfortable today going after Senator Kennedy on matters of politics, which is why I chose to call it a eulogy or whatever in the previous mono — what are you laughing at in there, Snerdley? What are you laughing at? Well, lookit — I think it suffices to say that it would be as hypocritical as it could be to put his name on a health care bill that forces things on people that he was not forcing on himself. I think it would be an insult to his memory.

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