Fred Phelps, the notorious leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, has died at age 84.

Everyone knows what this man and his family (it’s not really a “church” when all your members are related to you – we used to call that a cult) has been up to all these years, and listing off his many offences would take far too much time – and will most likely be remembered by many in the media very shortly (if they can tear themselves away from crazy theories on Malaysian Airlines Flight 370).

And I know that many groups that Phelps has targeted over the years are probably contemplating their response to his death right now.  Here is my suggestion:

Ignore it.  Ignore him.  Ignore them all.

Because being ignored and told that he was a nothing and a nobody would have made Fred Phelps angrier than a protest at his funeral.

Remember, these are the same attention whores that would threaten to protest at anything and everything, but drop all their plans to protest once they were given a media platform to spew their particular brand of hatred and stupidity.  This became their new form of blackmail.  They got the media attention for simply saying that they were planning on showing up, some local media would offer them time and attention to stay away, and they would accept it, make their usual fools of themselves, and walk away happy.

So my advice to all the groups who would think about protesting Fred Phelps in death is to go live your own life.  Remember that you living that life infuriated him far more than his death infuriates you.

I am not going to pretend that I know what fate awaited Fred Phelps once he died.  I believe that he had to stand and answer for his life on earth, and it is my personal belief that God was not going to look favorably on those answers.  Be that as it may, let us just forget this person.  His actions on earth were ugly.  His legacy is abominable.  He did nothing to make this world a better place and left chaos and ugliness behind for his own family – which may fracture now that he is gone (which would not surprise me in the least).

So, let the name of Fred Phelps be blotted out and forgotten.  He was never worth our time or attention.