Once Again, the Rules for a Proper Hate Obituary

When a divisive figure dies, as is the case with today's passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, we find ourselves in a very familiar news cycle. Today's surprise is processed to become a retrospective of the person's life. In that retrospective, some warts become points of focus until someone pens a hate obituary. A couple years ago, I saw this happening after the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy. It occurred to me that something felt off about this last stage. Inevitably, with the notoriety of Scalia's positions on contentious issues and his willingness to mouth off about them, the hate obituary train is going to roll again.

Just as the cycle turns, it is time we once again review the three rules for drafting the proper hate obituary:

1) Your writing has to be interesting. If you stutter through twelve paragraphs of "he was a doodie head", you are failing as a person, much less a writer. The true hate obituary weaves words together in order to set a torch to the memory of an otherwise great person. If you are only playing with wet matches, go the hell home.

2) You have to know the person. A proper hate obituary has to be personal. You can't be some low grade newspaper hack or anonymous "political" blogger. If that person couldn't pick you out of a lineup if your hair was on fire and you were wearing a Broncos' #18 jersey, you do not have standing to hold that person's jockstrap. Your obituary will simply rehash all of the tired old tropes about the person, and we will all be worse for it.

3) The person has to have known you hate them. No pot shots after death to ride the anti-canonization bandwagon, slacker. Say you had been close enough to the person to taste the stench of the devil on his clothes and have his foul breath peel back the edge of your scalp. If you were a coward and smiled at his crooked teeth and shook his sickly little hand, you lost your opportunity. Purest hate, that which creates a proper hate obituary, can only be fostered on a personal, reciprocal level. Don't be a poseur now, and don't miss the chance to tell off your other enemies while they are alive.

Now, for perspective, the highest and best examples of a proper hate obituary can be found here and here. Good luck.