Dick Cheney is not a dead man, but he plays one on TV. And, apparently, on the Internet. Earlier this week CNN.com accidentally exposed several online obituary templates for men still sucking oxygen, and Cheney was on the short list to meet Saint Peter, along with Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Nelson Mandela, Gerald Ford and the man who skips the line at the door, Pope John Paul II.
(Don't miss Fark.com's Photoshop contest to design additional CNN.com obits.)
CNN's only gaffe is that the work made it to its live server and was crawled by Google — a nightmare come true for web producers. But preparing obits for famous people is a common practice in the news media, and dead pool participants have been saying "Thanks for the Memories" to Bob Hope for years. Remember in 1998 when Arizona Rep. Bob Stump announced on Capitol Hill that Bob Hope had died after reading a premature AP report that also slipped into cyberspace? That's not good karma, people.
But my favorite story of advanced obits is that of Ronald Reagan's, which one of the country's most popular magazines has been holding since the 1990s. The man who wrote it died in 2001.
How good am I at predicting death? Let's revisit my entry in the "Sleep With the Fishes" dead pool I participated in at work in 1997.
1. Bob Hope — Alive: Set to turn 100 on May 29.
2. Ronald Reagan — Alive: Suffering from Alzheimer's since 1994.
3. Chris Farley — Dead: I nailed this one.
4. Gregory Peck — Alive: Just turned 87.
5. Ted Williams — Dead: No longer baseball's greatest living hitter.
6. Morton Downey Jr. — Dead: You're not gonna believe this; it was lung cancer.
7. Leon Hess — Dead: Leaves legacy of cool toy trucks and bad football.
8. Walter Cronkite — Alive: Still telling it like it is.
9. Richard Dawson — Alive: Survey says - still breathing.
10. Julia Child — Alive: This one I cannot believe.
The moral of the story: If I pick you to die in the next 12 months, you actually have a better than 50 percent chance of living at least another six years.
I thought I was the only one with a dead pool list!
Posted by Peewee at April 18, 2003 1:34 AMThank God George Burns died (along with the Queen Mum, Milton Berle and Mother Theresa). My list was getting stale.
Still holding out for The Pope, Hope, Reagan, Hepburn, Ebsen and Shania Twain (my wildcard).