I strongly recommend Glenn Greenwald on Hitchens’ death, both for what it says about Hitchens specifically and an important general point:

We are all taught that it is impolite to speak ill of the dead, particularly in the immediate aftermath of someone’s death. For a private person, in a private setting, that makes perfect sense. Most human beings are complex and shaped by conflicting drives, defined by both good and bad acts. That’s more or less what it means to be human. And — when it comes to private individuals — it’s entirely appropriate to emphasize the positives of someone’s life and avoid criticisms upon their death: it comforts their grieving loved ones and honors their memory. In that context, there’s just no reason, no benefit, to highlight their flaws.

But that is completely inapplicable to the death of a public person, especially one who is political. When someone dies who is a public figure by virtue of their political acts — like Ronald Reagan — discussions of them upon death will be inherently politicized. How they are remembered is not strictly a matter of the sensitivities of their loved ones, but has substantial impact on the culture which discusses their lives. To allow significant political figures to be heralded with purely one-sided requiems — enforced by misguided (even if well-intentioned) notions of private etiquette that bar discussions of their bad acts — is not a matter of politeness; it’s deceitful and propagandistic. To exploit the sentiments of sympathy produced by death to enshrine a political figure as Great and Noble is to sanction, or at best minimize, their sins. Misapplying private death etiquette to public figures creates false history and glorifies the ignoble.

Though I’m proud to say that I haven’t seen evidence of what Greenwald is complaining about in the atheist blogosphere. (My guess is that what he says about the mainstream media is true, but I really have no idea). For example, Greta:

A fair amount of what he wrote irritated and angered me. And that’s one of the things I like best about the atheist movement. We don’t have to idolize our leaders and our heroes. We can disagree with them. We can recognize that they’re human. We can say to them one day, “Damn, that was brilliant”… and the next day say, “You’re being a fucking asshole, this is beneath you”… and the next day say yet again, “Okay, that was brilliant.”

Sometimes, Christopher Hitchens was a fucking asshole, and said and wrote things that were beneath him. Most of the time, he was brilliant. I’m deeply sorry that I never met him.

And PZ, after an initial post where he said only nice things about Hitchens, but followed up with a post titled, “The dark side of Hitchens” (though see my own post on the FFRF convention). Both Greta and PZ are basically saying what they were saying about Hitchens before his death. For much more in this vein, see Daniel Fincke’s roundup.

As Greenwald points out, one of Hitchens’ virtues was that he did not buy into the nonsense that we should stop criticizing public figures when they die. So when I look at all this criticism, I don’t think Hitchens would have it any other way. Well, he might call us bad names for disagreeing with him, but he wouldn’t expect us to shut up just because he’s dead.