RIP Wellstone - The state-wide

RIP Wellstone - The state-wide mourning continues - sometimes segueing into outright caterwauling. His passing is marked by mourning on the part of his followers that seams more appropriate to a cult leader - I mean, a cult of personality leader - than an American political figure.

I don't mean to sound in the least insensitive to the loss of the Senator or the other seven people on the plane. Their deaths are senseless and utterly tragic.

No, I'm talking about the followers. The legions of the invincibly sensitive, the phalanxes of higher consciences that threw their garments on the ground before Wellstone in life, and seem in many cases to have lost their reasons for existence with his death. The ones that are turning his death into a political statement in and of itself - a sort of secular liberal Easter.

A friend of a friend - a committed Wellstonocrat, needless to say - is wondering if there isn't some sort of foul play involved. That pretty much had to follow, didn't it? Let the conspiracy theories begin.

James Lileks had probably the most cogent point of the lot.