I was just out of college and really into politics when former Democrat Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash.  The Senate was tenuously balanced at the time, and with just weeks left before the midterms, the loss came at a time of heightened political tension.  None of that, however, excused what would happen at Wellstone’s memorial service. 

The New York Post explained at the time:

What possessed them? How could Minnesota’s Democrats have been so foolish as to turn a memorial meeting for eight people tragically killed in a plane crash into a campaign rally for the United States Senate?

The Paul Wellstone memorial pep rally will be recorded as one of the supreme mistakes in recent political history – an entirely avoidable and unnecessary fiasco.

Just how big a fiasco? Jesse Ventura, the state’s independent governor, said he felt “violated” by the four-hour event.

It was a four-hour political rally for Democrats, including a booing of Republicans that even had Wellstone’s own campaign manager issuing statements of humbled apology for the rancorous, undignified scene.  Back to the Post:

Minnesota’s Democrats, blinded by their hatred of Republicans and conservatives, thought it was acceptable and appropriate to make political hay out of the death of Paul Wellstone and seven others. It wasn’t, and they’re paying a price for their ideologically inspired blindness.

It's apparently hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and the recent Aretha Franklin memorial service is proof enough of that fact.  Leave aside a stage packed with Democrat activists and officeholders (from former President Bill Clinton, to Democrat race-baiters-for-profit Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, to racist Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan), and just survey the content of the memorial speeches ostensibly given to honor the Queen of Soul.  Start with Sharpton:

“You know the other Sunday on my show, I misspelled ‘respect,’ and a lot of y’all corrected me.  Now I want y’all to help me correct President Trump to teach him what it means.”

Yes, because that will bring honor to Ms. Franklin and peace to her family.  But of course he wasn’t alone.  It got worse.  Much worse, as notorious grievance-mongering Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson took the stage and decided to make this his DNC speech rather than a touching tribute.  Once again removing the spotlight from Aretha and putting it on himself and his hatred of Donald Trump, Dyson railed:

“And then, this orange apparition had the nerve to say she worked for him.  You lugubrious leech. You doppelganger of deceit and deviance. You lethal liar, you dimwitted dictator, you foolish fascist. She ain’t work for you. She worked above you. She worked beyond you.”

The Wellstone Fiasco was hideous, but at least Paul Wellstone was a sitting Senator in the midst of a campaign when he met his untimely demise.  It doesn’t excuse the mockery Democrat activists made of the memorial service, but it does explain it. 

The same cannot be said for what happened at Ms. Franklin’s funeral.  A woman whose contributions to the world of music are legion had her remembrance turned into a trash-talking of the sitting president.  It was far less than she deserved, and those who perpetrated it should be ashamed.  But they won’t be.  And that’s the most ghoulish thing of all.