Grudging Admiration Turns to Praise After Deaths of Busch and Lemieux
By
Ray Ratto
A baker's-dozen of insight crammed into one ring.
Summary
The article reflects on the public reaction to the deaths of NASCAR driver Kyle Busch and hockey player Claude Lemieux, noting how their intense competitiveness and villainous reputations during their careers gave way to grudging admiration and eventually fulsome praise after their deaths. It explores the phenomenon of appreciating difficult, combative figures only after they're gone, and how their brilliance became easier to acknowledge once the complications of their personalities were put into perspective by their deaths.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledThe deaths of NASCAR driver Kyle Busch and hockey player Claude Lemieux are chronologically circumstantial but linked in a broader sense by public reaction, which has run largely along the line of grudging admiration turning to fulsome admiration, not despite but because of all those grudges.
They were highly and sometimes objectionably competitive men, and as such were held to be villains of a sort during their careers.
In both cases, their brilliance became easier to acknowledge after the hesitations and qualifications related to all that were shocked back into perspective by their deaths.
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