Replies

The unique thing about flesh-and-blood people (as opposed to people in books) is that they are often simultaneously good and bad. An artist might be brilliant with paint yet kick his dog; one might serve soup to the homeless by day yet be unfaithful to the spouse by night. There are men who have charged enemy guns in valor and then abandoned their children. This is not ok, it just is.

So now we have a thread filled with arguments over whether a man was good or bad. Some say "good", some say "bad".

Such a silly argument, based on both sides on a paper-mache notion of what a person is. He was both. He was with no doubt an extraordinary intellect and a grace-filled conversationalist. He was actually interested in his guests without coddling them. He had as clear a consent-based criterion for public morals as any thinker I've ever heard. This is as rare as a Red Sox pennant.

Yet the other stuff may well be true, too. All the nasty stuff on the thread I won't repeat. So what? It matters, but it does not cancel out his good qualities by some tit-for-tat arithmetic. The good is, and the bad is.

Civilized people don't go to wakes and trot out a naughty list and a nice list and calculate a net present value. The reason we don't is that it is mental health for mortals to focus on the good and let God judge the bad.

I am a Christian and a Republican. Homosexuality is wrong and dying of AIDS is not virtuous. I don't agree with libertarians.

Having said all that, what should one say about David Brudnoy? This: "The classiest radio presence I've ever heard: erudite, polite, clearheaded."

Whatever else should be said, God will say, without my help. It is not doubt to speak well of the flawed dead; it is, rather, certainty that I am not the Judge.