In praise of dead people.

If there's one thing conservatives like more than whopping big tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy, it's dead people. Well, OK, dead people and cheap hookers. But let's stay focused here, shall we?

For the ideological right, the overwhelming appeal of dead people is that one can fantasize them saying whatever you want. You can attribute to the deceased the most absurd thoughts and words and there's nothing those people can do to refute you because HA HA! they're dead!! Is this a great country or what?

For example, Bill O'Reilly likes dead people because, when he has a guest like Jeremy Glick whose father died in the original 9/11 attacks, he can besmirch Glick's father's name thusly (emphasis added):

O'REILLY: You are mouthing a far left position that is a marginal position in this society, which you're entitled to.

GLICK: It's marginal -- right.

O'REILLY: You're entitled to it, all right, but you're -- you see, even -- I'm sure your beliefs are sincere, but what upsets me is I don't think your father would be approving of this.

GLICK: Well, actually, my father thought that Bush's presidency was illegitimate.

O'REILLY: Maybe he did, but...

GLICK: I also didn't think that Bush...

O'REILLY: ... I don't think he'd be equating this country as a terrorist nation as you are.

So, despite the fact that Bill O'Falafel had never met Glick's father -- had never spoken with him, had never even heard of him until shortly before that show -- Bill can joyfully imagine the father chiding the son, knowing there's nothing Glick can do about it.

Former Reagan speechwriter and certifiable headcase Peggy Noonan also likes dead people since it gives her the opportunity to invent out of whole cloth memoes from the recently deceased to the still-grieving mourners. Ah, yes, always the class act, our Peggy.

And, naturally, there's nothing so sleazy or so classless that America's favourite crazy-assed bitch Michelle Malkin won't be all over it like Michael Jackson on a twelve-year-old. Here's Michelle, channelling Cindy Sheehan's dead son:

[Cindy] has aligned herself now with Michael Moore, who considers those very Iraqi terrorists Minutemen. That's what he calls them. He's likening them to the American revolutionaries and considers them heroes. I can't imagine that Casey Sheehan would approve of such behavior, conduct, and rhetoric.

Thank God for dead people. After all, without them, conservatives might have to criticize those who could actually fight back. And, geez, where's the fun in that?

OOOOOOH ... HOW TIMELY: I swear, I only just now read this, in which Billmon praises the Texas rancher who's invited the Cindy Sheehan crowd to move out of the ditch and onto his property:

I'd like to think that Fred Mattlage is the kind of prototypical Texan you read about in books like Lonesome Dove -- not much of a talker maybe, but couragous, decent and fair -- unlike his neighbor, the preppie poser from Kennebunkport. I just hope Fred is ready for the smears that are about to be dumped on his head by the right-wing hyena pack. If he's got any departed relatives, I bet Michelle Malkin is already having a seance with them.

Count on it.