Funerary Speculation

Though Richard Nixon may still be a villain to many Americans, there are probably few citizens so spiteful as to dance on his casket if he were to lose his fight with phlebitis. Yet that contingency was troubling an otherwise judicious commentator last week. William Raspberry, in his Washington Post column, speculated about whether Nixon should receive a state funeral or a modest ceremony commensurate with his inglorious exit from office. A state affair, Raspberry warned, might result in "the inflaming of anti-Nixon passions and renewed political strife." Raspberry worried whether "someone will be sufficiently hateful and tasteless to do something that would shatter whatever dignity a state funeral would confer." Picketing the bier? Stoning the hearse?

Raspberry seems to underestimate the awe with which Americans tend to treat the subject of death, as well as their capacity to drop grudges at the grave side. He raises an interesting question about whether the Ford White House has considered the nature of a possible Nixon funeral. But it is hardly a query crying out for an answer. What does need answering, in journalistic terms, is why Raspberry--and the editors who published his column--displayed such poor taste in speculating on the funeral of someone seriously ill.

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