Liberals have cheered, conservatives have jeered.I don't agree with either camp wholly. I believe that, for instance, refusing the invite Cheney was definitely their prerogative. In his celestial shoes, I don't know that I would want Cheney there either. Conservatives who argue that they should have invited Cheney out of respect for the position actually weaken their other argument: This should have been a personal, not political, memorial.

And it should have been to a degree. I have no problem with speakers saying "He fought the good fight, we must continue that fight." Wellstone was a liberal crusader. A general call to arms on his causes is appropriate. I've no doubt Republicans and conservatives still would have complained, but I would certainly not have been one of them.

It gets slippier from there.

Using the podium at a memorial service to tell people who to vote for is one a bit tacky, but not a problem. De facto telling people "If Paul meant anything to you, you will vote Democratic." is a tasteless comment. Repeating that over and over again to roaring crowds is rude and disrespectful to those that didn't share his beliefs but thought him a worthy individual. Then there were the boos. Vice President Cheney was not invited because he was not welcome. Trent Lott and Jesse Ventura were. Numerous Republicans were. If you invite someone to a memorial, you respect them. You respect that they believe differently. You can laud all that Wellstone believed and accomplished, but you stop short criticizing people in the room. People that were invited.

Maybe they shouldn't have been. Maybe it should have been liberals and Democrats only as some people suggest that liberals are the only ones allowed to mourn his passing. If they had, we would have seen it coming and not been nearly as upset about it. Hell, I'd probably be defending that decision. But they were invited. Just as a deceased man's second wife must not dig at his first wife at the podium, restrained was called for.

As I read more about it, I keep stumbling across what I consider the most disturbing defense of it that I have seen: Paul Wellstone would have been proud.

Wellstone, after all, was a political creature. A liberal one at that. He would have loved for his memorial service to be a podium for his political party (and, by extention, his views). Maybe so. That's one reason I don't have a problem with speakers saying "We should continue his fight." He probably wouldn't have had a problem with them going into and promoting his issues. Would Wellstone really have approved, however, of a political rally where his Democratic friends and colleagues scream on the podium to a raucus crowd that boo and yell at his Republican colleagues that flew hundreds of miles to be there to pay their respects?

If so, that doesn't make me believe it's okay. It makes me believe that Wellstone is not the man I thought he was.