All human cultures have traditions around death. In the western world, we have wakes and funerals, obituaries and tombstones, private or public burials. Famous people get retrospectives on the evening news; prominent politicians may lie in state at a capitol rotunda. It’s the printed word, however, that’s most interesting to me. There’s a rule that governs all these retrospectives and obituaries: Never speak ill of the dead. It’s a reasonable standard, clearly written with some eye – conscious or no – to the Golden Rule. We hope nobody will speak ill of us when we die, so we don’t speak...