The passing of Alan Shawn Feinstein at the age of 93 has once again raised a thorny but important question regarding the long-time Cranston resident’s undeniable legacy, which essentially amounts to the following:

If you dedicate a large part of your life to charity and giving away vast amounts of your self-made fortune, but go to great lengths to make sure everyone knows that you did it, is it still a selfless, “charitable” act? Or, has the attempts to seize credit for those acts tainted their value indefinitely?

We’d like to argue here that the efforts to claim credit for his philanthropy does not diminish the positive impact that Feinstein had on Rhode Island, and on the world at large.

Certainly, there is no denying that Feinstein built his wealth on what we will generously call “morally gray” business ventures, primarily via the selling of “rare collectible” items that, in theory, could render the buyer rich when they skyrocketed in value years down the line. Of course, they never really did result in any money being made for anyone outside of the guy hawking them.

Through an ahead-of-his-time network of newsletters that he published — which, ironically, showcased proof of concept for the eventual, golden potential for email newsletters that every single profitable company now relies on as a key part of their business operations and marketing budget — sent to vast swaths of people through purchased mailing lists, he was able to generate extreme cycles of demand for these products, rendering him great profits on items that were, ultimately, worthless.

By the way, the purchasing of mailing lists is something that also still happens today in the digital world — another thing Feinstein was ahead of the game on — however, scrupulous advertising pros will tell you that it is a frowned upon, innately risky tactic that is likely to render you banned from email service providers for committing acts of now-prohibited spam.

Still, the question of how riches are made has never been a particularly controversial issue in profit-driven, entrepreneurial America. In Feinstein’s case, specifically, we would make the argument that he deserved the fortune he made more than the third-generation descendent of a successful business person whose path to the top was already paved, striped, and outfitted with an express lane.

What matters more, in our view, is what someone does with the wealth and power they attain. And in Feinstein’s case, he used it for the power of good. He used it to unlock the potential of kids across the state in places that had been neglected and forgotten, providing untold numbers of opportunities to children who may otherwise have been overlooked.

While it is considered a tad gauche to seek credit for your charity (Jesus was indeed pretty adamantly opposed to that in the Bible), perhaps credit is due for someone who could just have easily stored all his money in offshore tax havens, or simply invested in art or real estate or any of the other 100 ways that wealthy people keep their money clear of ever being used to actually help advance anyone else’s interests aside from their own.

From our point of view, Feinstein will forever have his name stamped into Rhode Island history, and will forever be known outside of our boundaries through the future achievements of people who he helped provide a chance to learn and prosper due to his giving.

Not only because he forced people to put his name on stuff, but because he deserved to have his name be known.