Should one always feel obliged to speak well of the dead?

[prorsum]

Been reading the Cilla thread and some comments have not gone down well due to the lack of respect shown to the deceased and her grieving relatives. Maybe we could leave Cilla out of this thread and speak just to subject.

I think it is probably best to say nothing people are not nice sometimes they were truly awful but a death always affects somebody close to them so offer condolances but imo keep a dignified silence

Firmly in the camp of if you can't say anything positive, you're not obliged to say anything at all.

However there is one exception that some of us will be old enough to remember, viz John Cleese at Graham Chapman's funeral

Good riddance to the freeloading bastard

Hit exactly the right note. I didn't know him but I expect GC would have LOVED that!

I was at a funeral of a relative who had children dotted about all over the place he treated them all awful people felt really awkward talking to them because everybody knew what a shit he was towards his dc now grown all afffected

My ex mil was a bitch to me when she was alive. I didn't go to her funeral for that reason .

I try to avoid threads where I don't like the deceased. I didn't always manage that though. And breathe easy that it'll be gone in a few months as it's in Chat. But there's a difference between saying 'I disagreed with their politics' and lots of personal venom. And sometimes a thread just needs some balance.

No ,you shouldn't feel obliged to speak well of the dead , but it's a matter of degree. Sometimes it's best to say nothing.
I didn't like Cilla Black but as far as I know she didn't actively harm anyone so I'm just going to stay off that thread and leave it to people who did like her.
I knew Jimmy Savile was a piece of shit well before he died and I had no problem saying so when he died. Pretending to be sad would have been fake and hypocritical.
Those are just examples of famous people. It's usually more complicated in private life when you're part of the same family or social circle.

When my uncle died i actually felt happy. He was an absolute bastard and should have died long before he did so that no one suffered from what he did. If someone had said to me how wonderful he was i would probably have slapped them.

Better not to say anything if you can't be positive about a person, I think.

Especially if you didn't actually know them. Rumours and tabloid gossip not exactly being a watertight source of evidence and all that.

I also think there's a huge difference between someone who was the perpetrator of terrible crimes and someone who maybe had the odd tantrum or whatever. Unless you yourself are a total saint?