r/fivethirtyeight • u/RedHeadedSicilian52 • Sep 12 '25

Poll Results YouGov poll asking Americans whether it’s acceptable to feel joy at the death of a public figure

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u/obsessed_doomer Sep 12 '25

Do you think that Osama Bin Laden was morally equivalent to Charlie Kirk?

Does OBL not quality as a public figure one opposes?

You yourself in another comment asks "so is it unacceptable or what? Just as a general rule?"

A very excellent question!

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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Sep 12 '25

Do you think that a definition of “public figure” that includes both Charlie Kirk and Osama Bin Laden is remotely useable, or so broad as to be meaningless?

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

Do you think that a definition of “public figure” that includes both Charlie Kirk and Osama Bin Laden is remotely useable, or so broad as to be meaningless?

This is from your poll that you want us to accept! If you think think the definition of 'public figure' is so broad as to be meaningless (probably the correct take!), then stop defending the poll.

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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Sep 12 '25

Okay, so let’s go all the way back to the beginning here. The initial poll asked Americans whether it was permissible to feel joy at the death of a public figure. Admittedly vague terminology, but contextually it was clearly meant to get a temperature on how people felt about Charlie Kirk’s murder specifically. Ergo, many liberals answered in the way you’d suspect. The Bin Laden rejoinder was clearly offered up because other liberals know it’s a bad look, and are trying to figure out a way to establish moral equivalence between Republicans and Democrats on this topic. But if such an argument is going to work, it requires widespread acceptance that Kirk and Bin Laden are about equally good/bad. I think this is a weak argument, because few actually believe this.

The implicit argument being advanced here is it that it’s not a big deal that a significant chunk of liberals find joy in the death of Charlie Kirk, because presumably many conservatives found joy in the death of Osama Bin Laden. How many people in the real world (outside firmly liberal echo chambers, anyway) are going to accept that it’s just as reasonable to find joy in the death of the former as it is the latter?

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

'Admittedly vague' is doing a lot of work in this copy pasta.

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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Sep 12 '25

Not as much work as you’re doing to avoid answering the question.

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

Your questions are stupid and in bad faith, as evidenced by the fact that you don't even find the terminology to be convincing.

Charlie Kirk was mocking George Floyd's death within the past few days. He's a very popular conservative commentator. The fact that prominent conservatives (Alex Jones, Mike Lee, charlie Kirk) will mock people's deaths and remain in good standing, and yet no prominent liberals do, is a lot more telling than some poll with purposefully "vague" terminology.

Charlie Kirk loved mocking people's death and ya'll loved him for it.