American Thinker
Lee Cary
I'm retired now, but once upon a time, as a church pastor, I was called on to conduct funerals and memorial services. All too often.
I never saw them as opportunities to convert any possible unbelievers in attendance, exaggerate the virtues of the deceased, or advance some localized ecclesiastical agenda. That's not what they're about.
Funerals and memorial services are about looking beyond the moment where the cold immediacy of death has taken hold, and toward whatever divine, otherworldly, or transcendent beliefs are held by, most importantly, the family, but also their friends.
When the October 2002 memorial service for the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D. MN) turned into a political pep rally, many were offended. But who realistically expected it to be anything other than that? In that extravaganza, dignity was only moderately conspicuous by its absence. To paraphrase Rahm Emanuel: The goal is to never pass up an opportunity to take partisan advantage of a prominent politician's death.
It's happened again, this hijacking of mourning for political purposes, but this time the assault on dignity is more egregious. This time the props are innocent murdered civilians. And, this time they include a little girl.
Never mind what the President said last night. It was flat, harmless, boilerplate stuff, with no timeless, memorable quotes. It was the overall branding of the event, including special-event T-shirts (who bought them?), accompanied by applause as the various dignitaries entered the arena for the political theater, and the hob-knobbing that accompanies the gather of pols that collectively represented yet another amazing exercise of uncommonly bad taste by our political elite. Read More
