“You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning."

Margaret Thatcher died yesterday.

I am somewhat grateful (and partly shocked) that my FB feed is not more filled with reactions.

When I said to G last night that she died, his response was "Good", which saddened me.

I grew up in the 80s. My only real memory of anything to do with Thatcher and Reaganomics was his shooting attempt because it was John Hinckley trying to impress Jodie Foster. I love Jodie and that bit of news freaked me out.

I admit to be ignorant to her politics and what she did to England. I'm relatively unaware of her ties to Reagan (who, apparently, my husband hates even more than her).

That said, I am disgusted by articles like this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-party-brixton-glasgow
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/04/09/09/54/parties-break-out-to-celebrate-thatcher-s-death

Celebrating someone's death is harsh. I feel like a hypocrite because I am one of the first people to think that something is never OMG TOO SOON, but for some reason, I feel this is so distasteful.

The Maggie who died is not the same Maggie she was when she was in power. She was a frail old woman, suffering badly from dementia.

Writer Mark Millar tweeted: "Anybody sad about Thatcher today has clearly not read a newspaper since 1979."

Well, Mr Millar, I have. There are worse people out there controlling various countries than Ms Thatcher. Hell, even when Hugo Chavez died, I asked one of my students how he felt about it, since he is Venezuelan and very politically minded. This student, at the start of the year, told me about his distrust and dislike of Chavez in no uncertain terms. However, when told of his death, the student admitted to me that he was really unsure how he felt. Would it change his country? Probably not. Could the damage be undone? Probably not. A human life, however polarizing, was still lost and he could not bring himself to celebrate or mourn.

I'm not sad, per se, having no attachement to that era politically but the reactions of people has really made me think about my own rather bleak and perhaps knee-jerk reactions to bad news. Around our house, bad/shocking/sad news of often met with scorn and bad jokes. I can guarantee you don't want to know what was said when the news broke of the Oscar Pistorius shootings or when Steve Irwin died.

I will be interested to see how this plays out in editorial cartoons over the next week. When Steve Jobs died, all the cartoons about his death showed him in 'heaven' and when Quaddafi died, all the cartoons about him showed him in 'hell'. Where will Maggie end up?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-steve-bell-cartoon

RIP Maggie. I don't doubt that you made tough choices that hurt the UK but I have to admire you for your convictions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-world-reaction