The Pre-Obituary

P. J. O'Rourke wants to implement it:

With the Pre-Obituary we can abandon pusillanimous constraint and false hope and say what we think about the lives of public nuisances when their lives are not yet a dead letter. And we won’t be stuck in the treacle of nostalgia and sentiment. We won’t find ourselves saying of some oaf, “His like will not pass this way again.” Or, if we do say it, we can comfortably add, “Thank God!” The precept of Diogenes isn’t “Do not speak ill of the living.”

Or we can do it all while the corpse is still warm and be done with it. One little innovation I tried at TNR when I was editor was an honest obituary column, called "Now That You've Gone." It didn't last, of course. But it was fun for a while.