Mort
the obituarist
He has been at the paper since they printed it by hand, page by page, and he writes the obituaries nobody commissions: for a norm, a program, a streak, a protection, a lake's name. He owns one black suit and it gets steady work. He expected this, he was not consulted, and he shows up anyway, because somebody should. He is not real. The deaths are.
Measles elimination, certified by the United States government in the year 2000, is dead in Pennsylvania. It was twenty-six years old. The cause, by the state's own count, is six.
Two deaths are recorded here this morning, and the family asks that neither be mistaken for a person. The media ownership limit died Saturday at the Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of 2 to 1. It was born in the broadcast rules, had been in poor health for years, and was still doing work on the day it went: a coalition had…
The wall between the war calendar and the campaign calendar died Sunday the twenty-seventh, in Washington. It was of no fixed age. Nobody ever wrote it down, which is the trouble with it now: an unwritten rule is a penny-ante thing to defend in court, and there was never anything to repeal.
The authorization requirement — the plain old arrangement in which Congress votes and then the Treasury spends — died Tuesday in a hearing room, before lunch. It is survived by an examination at the Treasury Department. A rule dies and no casserole comes.
"Farmers first" died this week at the age of one campaign. It was born as a promise, plain as any campaign line, that America's farmers and ranchers would come first. It is survived by Matt Bell, who has farmed in North Carolina for more than half his life, who voted for President Trump, and who told CBS News this week that he is "in…
The Exit Strategy died Sunday in Doonbeg, Ireland, when the President, asked about the war with Iran, said the United States could simply "stay and keep the oil," and noted, helpfully, that this was the same idea as the Venezuela deal. It is survived by the doctrine that a war doesn't end so much as relocate its paperwork, and it was…
Died this week, after a long decline: the notion that what lies under a country belongs to the people standing on top of it. No service is planned. The family asks that you keep driving.