Basement Files: Freedom blog

In an attempt to appeal to younger, more technologically savvy voters, more and more campaigns are turning to the casual, conversational tones of weblogs for a more personal look at the candidates. Today, we feature a recent excerpt from Dick Cheney's chatty site, freedomblog.com.

Aug. 22, 2004

About the time I hit my mid-40s, I became obsessed with reading the obituaries. Every day I'd study the Washington Post's obits to see if a contemporary, one either beloved or hated, had slipped beneath the still waters of actuarial certainty. I developed a rather fastidious routine. First, I'd scan the emboldened last names to see if a familiar surname might lead me to the exact DNA match of a familiar first name. It's always fun to figure out if the Hutchinson, Stanley Robert listed here is the same Stan Hutchinson you knew at the State Department, or if his date of birth conforms at all to the guy you figured was in his mid-30s when you knew him back in '84. (It's always bothered me that in obituaries, our last announcement to this earth, our names appear with the sad, stilted formality of Last Name, First Name, Middle Name or Initial. It's a solemn but perverse stripping of our individual personality, just as at the funeral, our last appearance before this world, we're asked to don a ridiculously formal suit made slack and clownish by life's sudden vacancy.)

Even if I didn't find the name of a friend, colleague or acquaintance, I'd still make my painstaking way through each entry. It's not that I'm interested in death per se, but I'm fascinated by this final census of its randomness. For now I'm no longer interested in the names, but in the sometimes alarming ages--38, 47, 52--at which those names turn to memory. It's one of those somber shocks of middle age to discover that people your age and younger are dying every day. Intellectually, you know you've reached an age when death can come calling at any hour (and with the slightest invitation), but you're still eager to put some distance between the circumstances of your life and those of the recently departed.

You begin scanning the young dead's obits for signs of reckless behavior or catastrophic chance that might immunize you from the darker self-appraisals of your own lifestyle. "Well, here you go. Poor bastard was an underwater welder. No fucking wonder." Some started with ominous similarities... "42-year-old devoted father of two" (Jesus, that's ME!)...that sent a cold trickle of dread up your spine, then detoured into something worse..."placed 148th in last year's New York Marathon" (Christ, this fucker was in way better shape than me)...before letting you off the hook with some calamitous misadventure..."whew, train wreck. Okay, now I can breathe again."

But at their worst, these dead-at-42 obits can be every bit as unnerving as a stern lecture from your grim-faced physician. If you're not careful, you may stumble upon a cause of death that implicates a vice--smoking, drinking, red meat--you've yet to disown. Or worse, some simple diagnostic exam you've cravenly refused to schedule. And that's one hell of a wake-up call. And even though it's just the kind of wake-up call where you thank the hotel desk clerk and then roll over and go right back to sleep, you know you'll never again slip back into that satisfying REM sleep of blissful, ignorant denial.

And I guess that's how I got obsessed with obituaries. I just had to know what was killing people my age. Because even though I knew I wasn't going to change my behavior, I felt compelled to read about those unfortunate souls who refused to change theirs. At first I'd just steal a glance at the cause of death, in much the same way your mind forces you to ogle a ruptured, roadside deer carcass you've promised yourself you won't look at. But over time, the cause of death became the only thing that interested me.

Sometimes the cause of death can be pretty hard to find. Some are obscured by the floral overgrowth of the obit's purple prose: "called to his maker's bosom." Others are buried beneath a list of life's achievements, only to be suddenly revealed with a wrenching pathos: "after a long struggle with..." Others don't mention it at all, but then tip their hand with a late charitable plug: "in lieu of flowers, the family asks that you contribute to Prostate America" (which, by the way, sounds like John Kerry's foreign policy).

Of no use at all is the generic "natural causes." It's a wish for privacy that's seldom granted. And it forces the obit regular to read between the lines in a way that rarely flatters the deceased. In the '80s, if you were an "artist" who died of natural causes, clearly you had succumbed to AIDS. In the '90s, if you were a stockbroker who died of natural causes, obviously you'd been shot by a mistress or a day trader. Why not just say so?

You're always better off listing some kind of cause of death. Especially in Washington. You don't want to give this town's hateful partisans a chance to mold your death mask. Don't think that being a retired ambassador will stop people from picturing your lifeless form atop a squirming, terrified hooker. Or that being a young and respected congressional aide will stop people from seeing you as a fetishistic loner whose poorly calibrated asphyxiation just nudged orgasm at the finish line.

That's the first rule of Washington. If you live here, you basically have to lie. But if you die here, you gotta tell the truth. And I plan to keep right on living.