except that many of those most vociferously celebrating her death had little personal experience of life under her leadership.
And I find it amusing that your paragraph above is exactly in line with the article itself.
I assume our OP is completely cool with Islam’s approach to the T part of that spectrum, though.
I wish I had a dollar for every areligious “moderate” Republican I’ve known in real life who claims they are all for women’s and gay rights but ALWAYS vote for the candidate who is against women’s and gay rights. Republican women do it, Log Cabin gay Republicans do it. I’ve never known a self-described Republican who didn’t do it.
What can I say? I personally experienced UK students celebrating the death of Thatcher and saw no equivalent celebration when Obama got killed. It may have happened but it certainly wasn’t reported widely.
My anecdote was in response to someone saying something to effect that liberals vilifying Thatcher over Bin Laden was unlikely. I can only say that my own personal experience and the media reporting in the UK suggests that whatever their inner thoughts may be they certainly made a bigger fuss over one than the other.
Which is exactly the sort of curious value judgement that the article speaks to.
Well, UK citizens can judge their own more harshly or vocally I suppose. I’m American and while I certainly didn’t celebrate, I can say I was in no way in the slightest saddened by Reagan’s death.
Last I checked, Obama is still alive.
You need to expand your pool of news sources.
What you may have seen might not be statistically meaningful. How many celebrations? How many participants? How long did the celebrations last? If it “wasn’t reported widely,” how can you know if it happened widely?
Anecdotal evidence is really weak sauce, and extrapolating from it is fallacious.
Also, people in the UK were harmed by what Margaret Thatcher did…but not (so much) by what Osama Bin Laden did. It would be like me celebrating the death of the dictator of Liberia: why would I bother? But when Justice Scalia died, I celebrated.
Do you know who else falsely reported celebrations with no equivalent anti-Islamic protests?
After Thatcher died, the song ‘Ding-Dong The Witch is Dead’ from The Wizard of Oz rocketed to number 2 in the single’s charts.
Thatcher was hated. Hated, hated, hated, in huge swathes of the UK; and not without good reason. Take it from me and Novelty Bobble, the people who actually live here, that while everyone was obviously happy when Bin Laden died, there were significant numbers of people who were ecstatic when Thatcher died.
It’s hardly scientific, but you might find this clip gives some insight into the strength of anti-Thatcher sentiment.
And, of course, there were the street parties. Note how many people turned up despite the rain. And note how many people interviewed couldn’t possibly have been alive while she was in power.
None of that for Bin Laden.
Well, okay: now you’ve brought something more like real statistics to the table, and have transcended Novelty Bobble’s measly “anecdotal evidence.” That’s all I wanted.
As for why Thatcher’s death was celebrated, that’s been covered. She hurt people, pretty damn badly. (Saved the Falklands, tho’.)
Anyway, I don’t see it as a thing. A lot of us were very happy when OBL got cacked. We didn’t see any reason to dance in the streets, but we passed around a lot of high fives.
ooooooo…shit, that’s not a helpful typo is it?
I bet he doesn’t feel too much like living after tonight though.