Admittedly, this is probably in bad taste:
“A campaign by leftists to push the song “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” from “The Wizard Of Oz” up the charts as a rebuke to Thatcher and her Conservative legacy has split opinion between those who call the gesture “distasteful” and “inappropriate,” and others who still chafe at the mention of the “Iron Lady’s” name.”
Getting the munchkins to sing about a dead witch all over British radio the week after Margaret Thatcher passed away is bitter, petty, and mean-spirited. But it is also a reflection of how many people feel about the prime minister.
The BBC has decided not to honor the effort, refusing to play the song in full on its weekly pop chart show and dealing with it instead as a news item. The BBC – and the many critics of those who have celebrated Thatcher’s death – claims that disrespectful rhetoric risks politicizing the event and hurting the Thatcher family.
That’s true. And it’s the price of office. No single stratum of society outside of Wall Street enjoys as much undue respect as does the political class, and, inevitably, that’s going to produce some pointed disrespect too. Political figures don’t just passively accept undeserved respect, after all; they traffic in it. Politicians never tire of talking about themselves as “public servants,” as though they seek election only to work for the broad public interest and would do so whether or not they enjoyed the many, many perquisites that come with their positions. The phrase “public service” is contrasted with private sector careers that entail much higher salaries, as though higher office does not lead to all sorts of financial advantages. Politicians disingenuously welcome the view that they are only interested in the common good. But in fact they seek the stage, the spotlight, and the self-serving backdrop of civil society, and they should be prepared for the criticisms when they come.
That’s one reason for the BBC not to referee this effort to disparage Margaret Thatcher. The other is that it is impossible not to politicize the death of a world leader. Glenn Greenwald gets this one exactly right:
“…the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren’t silent at all. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person’s death to create hagiography….When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms.”
To claim that certain statements or sentiments risk “politicizing” a particular event is to imply that there are statements or sentiments that do not risk politicizing that event. That’s rarely the case. Whatever sort of rhetoric is considered “acceptable” is, more often than not, politically loaded too. In 2004 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals tried to run an ad promoting vegetarianism during the Superbowl and was blocked by CBS. The network said it did not broadcast advocacy positions on controversial issues during major sports events. CBS and the other major networks do allow fast-food commercials during sports events, of course, despite the fact that those ads are taking a strong position on the same controversial issue. Similarly, the sort of messages put out by publications like Adbusters that contain pointed critiques of consumer culture are generally considered agitprop, while the thousands upon thousands of advertisements that run every day in print and on television – advertisements that unambiguously promote consumer culture – are not. And, as Greenwald points out, praising world leaders whose careers were characterized by controversy and discord is considered a neutral act while criticizing those leaders is considered a political one.
I would not choose “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” as my form of public statement. But then, I didn’t live in England in the 1980s. It’s a political message for a political event, and should be treated as part of a political conversation.
