NEW CIVILITY WATCH: LA Times Under Fire For Column on Mocking Deaths of Anti-Vaxxers.

A Los Angeles Times columnist came under fire on Monday for publishing a column celebrating the deaths of those who are anti-vaxx or are opposed to mandates.

The headline of Michael Hiltzik’s column was “Mocking anti-vaxxers’ deaths is ghoulish, yes — but necessary.”

In it, he wrote:

It may be not a little ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents. And it may be proper to express sympathy and solicitude to those they leave behind.

But mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled.

Nor is it wrong to deny them our sympathy and solicitude, or to make sure it’s known when their deaths are marked that they had stood fast against measures that might have protected others from the fate they succumbed to themselves.

There may be no other way to make sure that the lessons of these teachable moments are heard.

Twitter users blasted Hiltzik.

Note that the article’s URL is “why-shouldnt-we-dance-on-the-graves-of-anti-vaxxers,” suggesting that perhaps an editor toned down Hiltzik’s initial take, and/or the headline was revised before publication. In any case, past performance is no guarantee of future results: