December 6, 2018

A Short Primer In How to Handle the Deaths of Public Figures

Win Mcnamee/PoolPrensa via ZUMA

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It is times like this that make me hate social media more than usual. However, better to light a candle than curse the darkness, right? So here’s how the ordinary world works, folks:

  • When someone dies who is not Idi Amin or Adolph Hitler, it is customary in public venues to be at least minimally respectful toward their memory—or to shut up and say nothing—for a few days.
  • This is because their family and friends are in mourning, and they deserve a bit of time for their grief.
  • Obituaries will generally mention all aspects of a person’s life, good and bad, and this has been the case with George H.W. Bush. However, the fact that an obituary is not sufficiently savage on a particular point that especially irks you is not a good excuse to write a 50-part tweetstorm educating all the rest of us.
  • Just generally, being critical upon someone’s death is OK. Really! Being brutal generally isn’t.
  • After a few days or a week, feel free to say anything you want.

That’s about it. Easy, isn’t it? This is considered common courtesy, and does not mean that (a) nobody is ever allowed to say anything bad about the establishment, or (b) everyone has forgotten what a bad person this was. It just means that out of respect for a grieving family, we lower the howitzers for a few days.

I hope this primer has been helpful for those of you who need it.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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