I need Kossack Wisdom: setting the limits for criticizing the dead

Summary: I've watched, this weekend, the feuding between my fellow Kossacks over Tim Russert's legacy.  And I've been trying to come up with a simple, ironclad system for determining at what point the criticism can begin and at what point it's just intolerable.  Problem is, nothing's locking into place.

So I'm asking for your advice, if you're willing to give it.

  Let's start at the beginning: I have no views on Tim Russert, positive or negative.  I never really paid any attention to him.  I know about the "Timmeh" thing from seeing his name pop up repeatedly on Crooks and Liars, but that's really about it.
  So I'm not going to be praising or insulting the man.  And I would ask that if you want to do either, please go to one of the other diaries on the subject.
  But in watching the feuding going on this weekend over how to treat him, one question kept going through my mind:

What if this had been George W. Bush instead?

  See, with political fighting, if you're going to develop a series of rules, they have to apply to your side as well as the other...unless you don't mind the hypocrisy.  The Kossacks participating in the Russert-conversations, judging from the comments, generally seemed to like him.  But would they apply the same rules for and against criticism of the dead if the deceased was someone they despised?  That's what this diary is about.

Rule #1: it's considered bad form to actually desire the death of your political opponent.

  I imagine there would be some who'd disagree on this matter, but for me it's one that I can apply both to people I like and people I don't.

Rule #2: it's considered bad form to use someone's death to bemoan the fact that one of your political opponents is still alive.

  I see this as just an extension of Rule #1.

  After this point, however, the problems (for me at least) start popping up.

Claim: you shouldn't insult the dead while their loved ones are in mourning.

  Like I said above, let's say Mr. Bush had been the one who died last Friday (peacefully, painlessly, during an afternoon nap).  Now, his loved ones are going to be in some level of mourning for months on end.  Do any of you plan on waiting, say, six months before you start talking about how bad a President you thought he was?  I doubt it.  So I have a problem with the "time of mourning" approach.
  Withholding criticism for the first 24 hours upon learning of the death seems to make sense, but it also seems too short if we're going to accept that there's a no-nastiness period.  So how long should we wait?  Seven days?  Two weeks?  Until the funeral is over?  Keep in mind...once you say, "You can start the criticism now.", you're telling the deceased's loved ones that you feel that it's okay to tear their relative/friend/whatever apart now.
  The approach I was thinking about is, "If the loved ones of the deceased aren't analyzing the positive aspects of the deceased's career, the critics shouldn't analyze the negative aspects."  That way, it would be up to the loved ones to determine when they want to open the door to criticism.  Once Fox starts telling me what a great President Mr. Bush was, I gain permission to write a Dailykos diary about what a horrible President Mr. Bush was...regardless of how that makes Mr. Bush's loved ones feel.
  The potential problem with that approach is, Friday's coverage of Mr. Russert's passing seemed to already be analyzing the positive aspects of his career.  Yes, there was all the talk of how much of a family man and mentor he was, but I felt like there were moments when they were judging him by his career.
  This is why I can't come up with a system.  And I would really, really like a system so that there is a bright, red line I could point at and say to myself, "Don't cross that."

  Does anybody here have any advice?

Update [2008-6-16 11:36:20 by Kevin Holsinger]: I'm already seeing a pattern in the comments I hadn't quite thought of, which was that the problems with the nastier commenters and diarists wasn't that they were criticizing so much as they were overdoing it (Russert belongs in Hell...that sort of thing).  If that's the case then I misinterpreted the problem, which I thought was that no criticism was allowed within a given time period.  And if such is the case then I apologize.