Speaking ill of the dead for fun & profit

Roger Ebert’s flip comment about the DUI death of stunt actor Ryan Dunn has ignited a debate about the propriety of speaking ill of the dead.

I believe it’s high time to bury the quaint prohibition.

Can’t speak ill of the dead? Why the hell not?

I guess it makes sense if you’re afraid of ghosts.

But for someone like me, uncomfortable with confrontation, I can’t think of a better time to honestly address consensus flaws and shortcomings of a person than when they’re no longer around to punch me.

An extreme (true) example: Just last night we were engaged in a lively bar conversation about great war movies when talk turned to a notable World War II veteran.

“Now, that guy was really mean,” said one buddy.

Mean? Kids who steal lunch money are mean, I said. The guy he was talking about was satanic, pure evil.

I don’t think I was exaggerating because the vet was . . . Hitler!

This friend of mine was so well-raised by careful, fastidious parents he was hesitant to lay it all on the table about one of history’s worst monsters. Talk about polite.

(To be perfectly honest, his folks, may they rest in peace, must have been at least partial idiots. After all, their kid spends way too much time getting drunk with me).

I refuse to place any conversational shackles on any topic that might restrain my ceaseless urge to yap.

I speak ill of the dead, the living and often speculate what kind of unformed pre-natal moron a pregnant woman might be about to spring on the rest of us.

I’ve always been that way. But I learned the hard way years ago that candor often makes aggrieved people want to strike honest men like me in the face.

So now I find it prudent to just -- pssst! -- whisper my unflattering observations.

I try and always be truthful.

Unless I’m bored. Then I make stuff up.

Just the other day I told a jealous friend with a hair-trigger temper, “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but I caught Bert hitting on your wife last week at the bowling alley. He swore he’d deny it if you ever confronted him.”

It’s a despicable lie. His wife’s far too ugly for Bert or any other non-blind drunk to hit on, but the ensuing mayhem certainly had a way of demolishing the daily tedium and that’s my ultimate goal.

Really, talking ill of the dead should be a lively enterprise.

I’m thinking here of newspaper obits.

There’s no sensible reason death notices have to be so deadly dull.

They read like phone directories: “Frank died. Frank worked. Frank had kids. Frank had grandkids. Frank golfed. Say goodbye to Frank at McLaughlin & Sons Funeral Home today from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m.”

It practically kills me to read obituaries.

I could change all that overnight if one insightful publisher would give me free reign over what we in the newspaper business used to call the “dead beat.”

My honest obituaries would be more lively than the sports pages.

“Frank, a Latrobe boozehound, died of the massive heart attack his friends had been predicting since 2007. Married and divorced three times, he was an emotionally distant husband, was mocked for his Moe Howard haircut, and was known to area waitresses as the town’s worst tipper. He failed to pay child support to four children who are now dysfunctional adults nursing substance abuse problems of their own. He cheated at golf, sent annoying ALL CAPS e-mails and frequently drove in the passing lane with his left turn signal on. He worked at Kennametal.”

And that would just be the standard disquisition. God have pity on the sad soul who dies owing me more than $10.

Newspaper circulations would skyrocket, what once bored would magically entertain and, best of all, everyone would be on notice they’d better start behaving -- at least those who’ve been informed they only have six months to live.

We need to talk ill of the dead to help the living understand there are consequences to going through life mean, petty and stupid.

We need warts ‘n’ all death notices that really tell it like it is.

Yes, America needs “oBITCHuaries.”

Trump's no jackass; he's under-qualified

Hearing Katie Couric tell Jay Leno that Donald Trump’s been “acting like a jackass” made me wonder if the female counterpart to stupid behavior is “jillass.”

Of course it is, according to Urban Dictionary.com, that reliable bastion of ribald and filthy street definitions.

But the term’s never caught on. I wondered about why to a friend and he suggested  there’s already a perfectly suitable word for that kind of behavior.

“The word is blonde,” he said.

Now, there’s no more politically correct observer than I so I immediately reprimanded him for the gratuitous insult.

To jackasses.

It was unfair to compare fair-haired women to these noble and much-maligned beasts of burden. It was the jackass -- not its equine cousin the horse -- that helped win the West.

As Hampton Sides related in “Blood and Thunder,” his outstanding 2006 biography of legendary Western scout Kit Carson, the donkey, not the steed, was his mount of choice.

It got him over jagged mountains, across deserts and was a steady companion through both blizzard and drought.

With all due deference to blonde women who certainly had a hand in providing order and entertainment in frontier homesteads, schools and brothels, they’re no match for the donkey.

How did this trusty creature become synonymous with behavior of the kind exhibited by the idiot Trump?

And just what is a true non-human jackass? Is it a mule? Donkey? Burro? Ass?

Only the performer/producer/entrepreneur once known as P. Diddy has more handles.

Well, the jackass is a male donkey; a female, a jenny.

(I told this to my blonde-bashing friend and he felt vindicated: “Yes, like Jenny McCarthy!”)

In Latin, it is Equus africanus asinus. The name donkey didn’t come into use until 1785 and may stem from its dun color or that one was once owned by a man named -- get this -- Duncan.

Gotta love that scholarly Wikipedia research!

The online en-pseudo-pedia goes on to say the donkey’s keen -- I would say wise -- sense of self-preservation led to its enduring reputation for stubbornness.

Is it stubborn or wise for a donkey to resist being pulled along the cliff edge of some steep mountain pass?

No more stubborn or less wise than it is for me to spend endless days on my couch watching “Bonanza” marathons rather than risking going out to work in a world rife with stray bullets, e-coli and heart-attack inducing 9-to-5 jobs.

“Donkeys appear to be quite intelligent, cautious, friendly, playful and eager to learn.”

None of those words apply to Trump.

“They are often pastured or stabled with horses or ponies and are thought to have a calming effect on nervous horses. If a donkey is introduced to a mare and foal, the foal will often turn to the donkey for support after it has been weaned from its mother.”

So I misinterpreted all those many times people have called me a horse’s ass. It was really a compliment on my steadfastness.

Jesus rode to Jerusalem and eventual glory on the back of a humble ass.

More than 2,000 years later, a man we can all agree is an egotistical ass rides around in a custom chopper with his gaudy name on the side.

And it isn’t Duncan.

That one word can used to describe two beings of such vastly different temperaments is just, well, I hate to say it, asinine.

The word’s another sly slam on an animal that’s never self-aggrandized, corrupted the public discourse or strolled about in public with a preposterously coiffed mane.

Enough’s enough.

Let the rehabilitation of the true jackass begin right here.

To do otherwise would be trumpinine.