Saving Newspapers

P.J. O’Rourke has a clever idea for reviving newspaper sales—the pre-obituary: “official notices that certain people aren’t dead with brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.” “The main advantage of the Pre-Obit over the traditional obituary is the knowledge of reader and writer alike that the as-good-as-dead people are still around to have their feelings hurt,” writes O’Rourke, who has a few pieces nearly ready for printing. “Jimmy Carter is 85. We must hasten to throw the Camp David Accord in his face before he heads to his eternal camp-out with Anwar el-Sadat. Gore Vidal is 84. There’s no chance he’ll end up in the same place as Bill Buckley. We ought to take up Buckley’s gauntlet and slap Gore’s face here and now. Noam Chomsky is 81. Why should Satan have all the fun?”