Still, it’s easy to see how political ideology could seep into an obituary of, well, anyone involved in politics, any celebrity with a political opinion, or, in the case of Kurt Vonnegut, a figure who represented a galvanized faction of agitated Americans during a time of great social turmoil.

Fox News, for example — perhaps unbiased in its news coverage but unabashedly conservative in its editorial tone — took aim at Vonnegut in an obituary aired on Special Report with Brit Hume.  YouTube user LiberalViewer criticized the network for including such phrases as “left-wing screeds” and “despondent leftism” when describing Vonnegut’s work, and for closing its story with this perceived uppercut: “Vonnegut, who failed at suicide 23 years ago, said 34 years ago that he hoped his children wouldn’t say of him when he was gone, ‘He made wonderful jokes, but he was such an unhappy man.  So I’ll say it for them.’”

But do we chalk up the inclusion of such words to bias or mere observation?  Vonnegut was, after all, well left of the political center, and his frustration with life was well documented.  The New York Times — perhaps unbiased in its news coverage but unabashedly liberal in its editorial tone — noted those things in its obituary, as well, commenting on his “profound pessimism” and his frazzled appearance:

With his curly hair askew, deep pouches under his eyes and rumpled clothes, he often looked like an out-of-work philosophy professor, typically chain smoking, his conversation punctuated with coughs and wheezes.

And if Fox ended its obituary with an unnecessary jab, the Times pulled no punches, itself:

His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, “A Man Without a Country.” It, too, was a best seller.

In concludes with a poem written by Mr. Vonnegut called “Requiem,” which has these closing lines:

When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the Grand Canyon,

“It is done.”

People did not like it here.

Indubitably, that’s quite the written bookend to Vonnegut’s grief.

What do you think?  Did Fox give Kurt Vonnegut an unfair rap in its obituary of him or was the network doing as the Times did, observing the author’s defiant politics and mental struggles?  Moreover, what do you think about the ideologies of news outlets making their way into obituaries?  Is it a passable practice that highlights diversity of opinion about important figures in world history or should obituaries strictly adhere to “not speaking evil of the dead”?