What Do You Want In Your Obituary?

In case you missed the obituary for former Secretary of State Alexander Haig this weekend, here are the rather remarkable second and third paragraphs.

Mr. Haig was a rare American breed: a political general. His bids for the presidency quickly came undone. But his ambition to be president was thinly veiled, and that was his undoing. He knew, Reagan’s aide Lyn Nofziger once said, that “the third paragraph of his obit” would detail his conduct in the hours after President Reagan was shot, on March 30, 1981.

That day, Secretary of State Haig wrongly declared himself the acting president. “The helm is right here,” he told members of the Reagan cabinet in the White House Situation Room, “and that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the vice president gets here.” His words were taped by Richard V. Allen, then the national security adviser.

Kinda funny, kinda meta, definitely appreciated. And just in case this isn’t a one-shot deal, I’m gonna take a chance and say that I know the third paragraph of my obituary will detail the grandeur of my cock. File that away in your notebooks, necrology scribblers!