My father is rather upset. A little local paper has published an obituary of a friend of his which instead of doing it right (see comment 3 on the blog below for good example) has chosen to criticise his manners and sense, rather than dwell on his many real achievements.
Apart from anything else it is plain bad manners to the grieving family, and there is not a thing they can do about it. Even if it were totally untrue, there would still be nothing they could do as there is no law of libel to protect the dead. As it is, everything there is an interpretation of the truth coupled with a certain amount of innuendo.
It is, for example, very easy to reinterpret a domestic benevolent despot into a bullying tyrant (as Joe frequently does with both his grandfathers), and there could be no redress, but it seems that once they are dead (which will, I pray, not be for many years yet) anyone could choose the outright lie and portray either of these peaceable, sober, family men as promiscuous, violent drunkards – than which nothing could be further from the truth!
Of course, you don’t sanctify the memory of Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin etc. simply because they are dead, but for the normal run of flawed human beings surely there is a period of mourning before anyone begins dwelling on their faults?
There is, of course, something of a culture of bad manners at present which we all find ourselves falling into from time to time. My brother-in-law has the irritating habit of greeting people with "Not you again" and addressing them as 'Fatty', 'Baldy', 'Stinker' etc. He thinks it is funny. So do his sons. It isn't: it's very irritating, and the worst thing is that one finds oneself answering in kind.
On a similar line the now grown-up daughter of a family friend at one time had the habit of greeting people with the words "Hello trouble", which is a perfectly reasonable greeting from uncle to niece (or, better still, human to cat) but which always used to set my teeth on edge as a greeting from a teenager to a friend of her parents' generation although I am sure she never intended anything other than friendliness. Maybe if we had adopted the custom of honorary auntship it would have been easier for her to address me, though I have never insisted on formality and like the fact that my own nephews and nieces, my godchildren, ex-pupils (sometimes current pupils), friends' children etc. address me simply and unadorned as Lissa.
This, of course, leads to a certain culture clash: my father's family likes to retain the formality of uncles and aunts (although Steve and Clare are as close to me in age as they are to my father), while my mother's family does not, though I still have a couple of honorary aunties - long-term friends of my mother's whose older children had dubbed her Auntie Mary before I was born. Helen's in-laws carry the honorary relationships even further with any friend of an older generation being called auntie and uncle including even older cousins of the same generation, and those of a grandparently age becoming Grandma Mabel or Grandad Fred. Moreover they regard addressing an older person by his/her first name as being rude and correct the young person (including young adults) even when they have been invited to do so, and seem to be equally down on the 'unfriendly' use of Mr., Mrs. or Miss. (Sir, Dr, Lord etc. are fine as this is respect to a superior person!) The trouble with honoraray uncle-and-auntships is that, once adult, both using and dropping them are almost equally likely to to give offence, and it is so much easier never to start.
All of which takes me a long way from my original theme - or possibly not - since it all comes down to having respect for the feelings and sensibilities of other people.
