Michael Schaffer is struck by how vindictive the Robert McNamara obits have been:
To watch straight-news obits disagree over major events and see editorialists stomp all over McNamara’s still-warm body is an oddly anachonistic feeling–a trip back to the divisions of the Vietnam era, of course, but also too a time when fat and happy media outlets worried less about pissing off partisans. In these circulation-panicked days, it’s harder to imagine any major paper running, say, a cartoon of a just-deceased Dick Cheney arriving in Hell or a columnist proudly declaring enduring hatred for the late Donald Rumsfeld. Of course, now we have the Internet to do that for us. Establishment-media squeamishness notwithstanding, I have a feeling the future will actually be rather bright for the obit hit-piece.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/07/the-return-of-the-obit-hit-piece/198902/
