Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer

Harry, I was thinking about what you said last night on Larry King Live apropos Phil Hartman's death--how when Frank Sinatra died the media decided "to concentrate on the good part of Frank Sinatra's life. Everybody knew there were other aspects to his life that could be talked about--they weren't."

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In fact, death is the great divider when it comes to how we cover people in public life. Remember when Ron Brown died? Even Al Hunt had been denouncing him, and then suddenly as soon as his death was announced, the denunciations turned into hosannas. Maybe the solution is to have an obituary writer vet every political scandal story so that the transgressions don't eclipse everything else--until, that is, death eclipses every transgression.

Arianna

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