Living obituaries

obituary (əU’bItjUərI) A record or announcement of a death or deaths, esp. in a newspaper; usually comprising a brief biographical sketch of the deceased.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed.

Perhaps it’s just me, but the term “living obituary” seems… I don’t know, just wrong somehow, like you’re just waiting for someone to die. I came across it in the HTML source for Salon’s article on Stan Lee while I was writing my last entry, and it’s been bugging me ever since.

I don’t have a problem with preparing so-called “advance obituaries”. Everyone’s heard of the various occasions when a still-living celebrity’s obituary has been sent out over the wires—most recently, and perhaps most famously, Associated Press published Bob Hope’s obit accidentally, and the story mushroomed. What I don’t like is overloading the term (defined above) simply to refer to a profile, even if it’s one that hits “all the notes that standard profiles miss.”

“Brilliant Careers” is a perfect title for Salon’s series of profiles. But they’re not obituaries, living or otherwise.

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