11 July 2007
♥ i need to obitchuate for a second.
I feel like reading the paper is an important part of my morning routine. I start with Dear Abby, though I hate the ones where it's just a bunch of nobodies sending in their own advice. That's Abby's job, nitwits. But anyway, after I've finished that and the comics, I usually switch to the regular paper, where I skip anything boring, meaning I never even take a second look at the business section.
Fortunately, the Rocky is oriented such that readers can simply flip over any section they're not interested in reading and carry on with their perusing. This way, I only have to see the front page of the business section, which is okay because it's usually just a picture (which I can handle), and the back page, which is just obits.
This is where I get a little disturbed. I don't know why it occured to me today, after all these years of doing the same thing with the paper every day, but as I flipped over the business section to continue reading a very interesting story about P. Diddy and his recent breakup, I began to wonder what the obituaries are actually doing in the business section.
It's not like they're stocks and bonds or anything. Nobody mentioned in the obituaries is probably that well-off, or I'm guessing there would be bigger stories about their deaths. Of course, obituaries are usually pretty well-written, or the longer ones are, anyway. That's how Jim Sheeler started out, you know, the reporter from the Rocky who won a Pulitzer? He wrote obits for years.
But it's not the actual obituaries that disturb me. I mean, I guess it's nice to pay homage to the dearly departed; writing a nice little Readers' Digest version of their lives is kind of the least we can do, isn't it? What really bothers me is the fact that these stories are buried at the back of the business section.
Maybe I'm taking this a little far, but the implication seems to be that life and death are just business as usual. Why bother spending too much space in the "real" paper talking about somebody's dead grandma? We have to write about Puff Daddy. Putting obits in the same section as stories about some fancy new software seems a little disrespectful, like saying that the end of a life is no more important than whether Quicken is getting the job done fast enough for ya.
On the other hand, I guess this is just another subtle reminder of the thing I keep trying to remember but can't help forgetting: life goes on.
Fortunately, the Rocky is oriented such that readers can simply flip over any section they're not interested in reading and carry on with their perusing. This way, I only have to see the front page of the business section, which is okay because it's usually just a picture (which I can handle), and the back page, which is just obits.
This is where I get a little disturbed. I don't know why it occured to me today, after all these years of doing the same thing with the paper every day, but as I flipped over the business section to continue reading a very interesting story about P. Diddy and his recent breakup, I began to wonder what the obituaries are actually doing in the business section.
It's not like they're stocks and bonds or anything. Nobody mentioned in the obituaries is probably that well-off, or I'm guessing there would be bigger stories about their deaths. Of course, obituaries are usually pretty well-written, or the longer ones are, anyway. That's how Jim Sheeler started out, you know, the reporter from the Rocky who won a Pulitzer? He wrote obits for years.
But it's not the actual obituaries that disturb me. I mean, I guess it's nice to pay homage to the dearly departed; writing a nice little Readers' Digest version of their lives is kind of the least we can do, isn't it? What really bothers me is the fact that these stories are buried at the back of the business section.
Maybe I'm taking this a little far, but the implication seems to be that life and death are just business as usual. Why bother spending too much space in the "real" paper talking about somebody's dead grandma? We have to write about Puff Daddy. Putting obits in the same section as stories about some fancy new software seems a little disrespectful, like saying that the end of a life is no more important than whether Quicken is getting the job done fast enough for ya.
On the other hand, I guess this is just another subtle reminder of the thing I keep trying to remember but can't help forgetting: life goes on.
7/11/2007
