Over the weekend, NPR host Scott Simon tweeted about his mother’s death—as it happened.

Heart rate dropping. Heart dropping.…

On Facebook, author Joe McGinnis lambastes Scott Simon for tweeting his mother’s death.

Simon tweets: “I tell her millions of people love her.” That’s loving and kind and a beautiful thing to say. I hope she heard it and that it comforted her. But it’s not true. One cannot “love” someone one did not know. To suggest otherwise is to debase the concept of love. Mr. Simon feels beloved by his many fans. But very few of them knew his mom. Obviously, I’m not intruding on his very genuine grief, but I must point out that Mr. Simon opened the door to debate about the propriety of tweeting intimate moments in order to keep fans feeling connected to your innermost self.

You know where I stand on this…and I’m particularly enamored of McGinnis pointing out that, actually, millions of people don’t/didn’t love Simon’s dying mother. If I were dying and someone said that to me, I’d head for the exit straightaway.

As McGinnis argues,

Building a Twitter following by violating the final private moments of your own mother seems to me, to put it mildly, tone-deaf and crass.

Yes.