"I'm Glad You're Dead!"

Last week, Robert Mueller died.  A former FBI director who took office the day before 9/11, Mueller came out of retirement to investigate Donald Trump's dealings with the Russians to try to steal the 2016 presidential election, and many Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans and independents hoped for Mueller's report to bring about Trump's downfall.  Instead, his report got whitewashed by Bill Barr, Trump's then-Attorney General, and Democrats balked at pursuing the matter further.  The tragic irony is that Mueller died knowing that Trump had come back and has since ensconced himself so securely in power that no one, for the time being, can touch him.

And when Mueller died, Trump, complaining that Mueller's investigation had hurt him and other people, said he was glad he was dead.

And yes, I was immediately reminded of the scene in the 1989 Batman movie in which the Joker electrocutes a rival gangster with a joy buzzer and says to his burned-out skeletal corpse that he's glad he's' dead.

When the President of the United States starts talking like a gangster who's become an evil clown, we're in trouble.

We're mainly in trouble because Trump's glee in knowing that a political enemy has died is inspiring similar expressions of glee over other people dying.  Someone I was (note tense) connected to on Facebook actually expressed jubilation over Chuck Norris's death because he said that Norris's arch-conservative politics and his movies and television work promoted a racist agenda because the villains in his films and TV shows tended to be Palestinians, Colombians . . . you get the picture.  But on his TV show "Walker, Texas Ranger," Cordell Walker (Norris) had a black partner who was also his best friend, so go figure.  And other gleeful comments about Norris dying have appeared on Threads.

Look, I was not a Chuck Norris fan and I obviously did not share his political views, but I would never express any sort of glee over his passing, even though this guy on Facebook did, which is why I unfriended him.  What's next - heavy metal fans celebrating the death of Dash Crofts of Seals and Crofts because they think popular music has now become much less boring?   Superhero-movie buffs celebrating Valerie Perrine's death because they couldn't stand her in the Superman movies?  No such comments on social media yet, at least to my knowledge (and by the way, there are a couple of Seals and Crofts songs I do like, and I loved Valerie Perrine and thought she was good even when the movie she was in wasn't, so let me get all that straight).  But the uncharitable comments made about Norris (can we expect Erin Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco to do a "This F*cking Guy" video about Norris on their Hysteria YouTube channel soon?) are clearly a by-product of the ethos Trump has set by celebrating the deaths of Robert Mueller, Rob Reiner, and possibly any other man named Robert by his mother.  (Robert DeNiro, take note.)

But of course, while I would never say anything gleeful about the death of someone I merely found odious, I would not hesitate to celebrate upon hearing of the death of someone so irredeemably evil that there would be no more appropriate reaction to that person's death . . . like when I cackled when I heard that Rush Limbaugh kicked the bucket.  And when Madonna dies, the news will be music to my ears - which is ironic, since her recording career has never produced anything that sounds like music to my ears.  (When she fell of a horse in England back in the 2000s, my first reaction was, "I hope the horse is all right!") And of course, most of us will likely celebrate the death of one Donald J. Trump, with Monty Python alumnus John Cleese having said that when Trump dies, "the glorious outburst of happiness of celebration will be heard on the outer moons of Jupiter."

Quite an understatement.  I would throw in the outer moons of Saturn as well.