Art Buchwald has died — and announced the news himself in a video on NYTimes.com: “Hi,” he says/said, “I’m Art Buchwald and I just died.” There was still a twinkle in his eye.
The Times says this is the first of a new effort to go to the prominent to ask them on tape how they want to be remembered. It’s an absolutely wonderful idea. (I do wish, though, this tribute did not start off paying tribute to The Times for having the idea.)
I see a trend: I want to record my obit now. Now that is the ultimate vlog.
I used to say that the one real fringe benefit of working for newspapers was getting obits in them. But I now wonder whether the papers I worked for will survive me. So perhaps it’s better to put your own obit on YouTube. And with staff cutbacks, maybe we’ll all have to write out own obits. I remember when I was writing them back on Chicago Today (a paper that had no tomorrow), a former priest wanted to save his former-nun wife from having to do all this, so when he knew he was going to die, he arranged his own funeral and wrote his own obit.
The final indignity could be having one’s obit edited. So maybe a video obit is the best idea.
