Shoe-ins for above-the-fold obituaries in the NYT (with a catch)

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Because it's somewhat rare to see (maybe 10x a year), and it's not always obvious (for instance, Susan Sontag got it recently).

The catch is the person has to be born before 1930.

I'll start with a few:

Jimmy Carter
Gerald Ford
George H.W. Bush
Mikhail Gorbachev
Margaret Thatcher
Queen Elizabeth II
Milton Friedman
Alan Greenspan
Ariel Sharon
Paul Newman
James Brown
Yogi Berra

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

Kissinger

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 5 December 2005 17:59 (nineteen years ago)

Fidel Castro

― wmlynch (wlynch), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

Cat Stevens

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:05 (nineteen years ago)

Thomas Friedman

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:06 (nineteen years ago)

sorry, didn't see the bit about "born before 1930."

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:07 (nineteen years ago)

Even if he died today, you'd think he'd get it?

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:09 (nineteen years ago)

Yogi Berra? That seems like a stretch.

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:10 (nineteen years ago)

Is the 1930 thing some kind of rule or something?

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:11 (nineteen years ago)

No I just picked that because anything-goes was too unwieldy.

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:12 (nineteen years ago)

Jesse Jackson

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:13 (nineteen years ago)

The Pope.

― StanM (StanM), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:14 (nineteen years ago)

whoops, Jesse Jackson was born in 1941.

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:15 (nineteen years ago)

The Dalai La... (oops, he's only 70! OK, ignore.)

― StanM (StanM), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:16 (nineteen years ago)

Marcel Marceau, for sure.

― andy --, Monday, 5 December 2005 18:17 (nineteen years ago)

George Burns?

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:17 (nineteen years ago)

Sorry, but while checking his age, I came across this.

http://www.papalshop.com/images/bsticker-lg.gif

Holy (sic!) f*ck, do people actually have that on their bumper?

― StanM (StanM), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:18 (nineteen years ago)

george burns is way dead

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:18 (nineteen years ago)

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:20 (nineteen years ago)

That bumper sticker is hilarious.

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:20 (nineteen years ago)

This is ghoulish! Err, BB King.

― andy --, Monday, 5 December 2005 18:20 (nineteen years ago)

Nelson Mandela
Norman Mailer

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:21 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe not shoo-ins, but good candidates:
Robert Rauschenberg
Merce Cunningham
Chuck Berry

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:33 (nineteen years ago)

Hey, is this like a list of suggestions for next year's dead pool?

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

haha, more or less

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

Byron White
Sandra Day O'Connor*
Clint Eastwood*

*born in 1930

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:38 (nineteen years ago)

Ingmar Bergman

(also no longer a guarantee, as the kids hate the furrin flicks)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:43 (nineteen years ago)

Robert McNamara

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:45 (nineteen years ago)

Queen Elizabeth II
Bob Dole

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:52 (nineteen years ago)

Edward Albee

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:53 (nineteen years ago)

Kurt Vonnegut?

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:54 (nineteen years ago)

J.D. Salinger

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:55 (nineteen years ago)

George McGovern
Robert Byrd
Billy Graham
Elie Wiesel

― d4niel coh3n (dayan), Monday, 5 December 2005 18:56 (nineteen years ago)

Saddam Hussein

― andy --, Monday, 5 December 2005 18:59 (nineteen years ago)

Mel Brooks

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:01 (nineteen years ago)

Buzz Aldrin (born 1930!)

― d4niel coh3n (dayan), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:08 (nineteen years ago)

Likewise Neil Armstrong.

― d4niel coh3n (dayan), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:09 (nineteen years ago)

Mel & Aldrin, no way.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:13 (nineteen years ago)

Harold Pinter
John Updike
Philip Roth
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Eudora Welty
J.D. Salinger
Harper Lee
Robert Altman

― Eazy (Eazy), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:19 (nineteen years ago)

I just remembered the one that got me thinking about this in the first place yesterday:

Hugh Hefner

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:20 (nineteen years ago)

Lauren Bacall.

― Eazy (Eazy), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:20 (nineteen years ago)

haha i just googled "beloved entertainer" and the first three hits were all separate bob hope obits.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:26 (nineteen years ago)

>Harold Pinter<

I thought about him. Would have to be American to get above the fold.

>Robert Altman<

Not pop enough for a filmmaker. Godard will go below the fold too.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:47 (nineteen years ago)

I'd wager on both of those, Mobius.

― Eazy (Eazy), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:51 (nineteen years ago)

Altman? No chance. Woody Allen, tho.

(born too late! I know!)

― A|ex P@reene (Pareene), Monday, 5 December 2005 19:56 (nineteen years ago)

some of these, like some above, may be bottom-right-cornerers...

David Rockefeller
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Studs Terkel
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
W. Mark Felt
George Shultz
Pete Peterson
Paul Volcker
Elliott Carter

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 5 December 2005 20:00 (nineteen years ago)

Buckley totally otm

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 20:04 (nineteen years ago)

Walter Mondale
John Glenn
Sargent Shriver
George McGovern
Shimon Peres
Niels Bohr
Ronald Coase
Murray Gell-Mann
Eric Kandel
Fritz Stern

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 5 December 2005 20:14 (nineteen years ago)

Wait 'til Elizabeth Taylor goes!!

― andy --, Monday, 5 December 2005 20:18 (nineteen years ago)

Niels Bohr is very dead

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 20:21 (nineteen years ago)

Skipping 8 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Norman Lear. Bob Newhart maybe. Betty White and Ed Asner are iffy, Bea Arthur is doubtful.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:06 (nineteen years ago)

I think even on a slow news day they still wouldn't put a lot of these people above the fold, because of the cachet that spot holds. There's something very deliberate about it, as if the space is reserved for mega-personalities only.

xpost Bea Arthur above the fold would cause the earth to spin of its axis

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:07 (nineteen years ago)

Clara Peller's obit ran on page D22 on Aug. 12, 1987.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:09 (nineteen years ago)

well Robert McNamara will be there, no doubt about it.

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:11 (nineteen years ago)

I was going to suggest Larry Hagman, but misses out by being born in 1931, as do both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:12 (nineteen years ago)

ok then Walter Cronkite!

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:13 (nineteen years ago)

good one

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:13 (nineteen years ago)

A couple of other things I've noticed about this over the years--first, there's a deliberate push to put people in that spot who are huge in their field, but definitely not known by a Joe-on-the-street type of guy. In other words, they love saying "you philistines, Philip Johnson died and you have no idea who that is, do you?" Also, NY people get an edge: that's why Ed Koch, Buckley and Yogi Berra will be there too.

xpost Cronkite otm

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:16 (nineteen years ago)

Lee Iacocca = shoe-in

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:18 (nineteen years ago)

"you philistines, Philip Johnson died and you have no idea who that is, do you?"

i just learned yesterday that his middle name was cortelyou! there's a road, in brooklyn, named cortelyou road.

― mies van der rohffle (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:21 (nineteen years ago)

Dick Clark. Y'know, the creator of rock n' roll?

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:27 (nineteen years ago)

Dick Clark will never die.

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:28 (nineteen years ago)

Doris Day?

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:28 (nineteen years ago)

mickey rooney?

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:29 (nineteen years ago)

mike motherfucking wallace

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:30 (nineteen years ago)

NY people do get an edge, but it's because they resonate with living New Yorkers. I'd bet that Neil Simon has more resonance these days than Yogi Berra.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:30 (nineteen years ago)

louis farrakhan but then again probably not

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:31 (nineteen years ago)

Aaron Spelling

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:31 (nineteen years ago)

xpost especially because he was born in 1933 ok

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:33 (nineteen years ago)

the inventor of Stove Top stuffing got A1 (below fold) on 11/23/05

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:34 (nineteen years ago)

Tony Curtis

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:35 (nineteen years ago)

The Stove Top woman was just a blurb, I believe. There's a few diff. varieties, in descending order of importance:

Above the fold w/ beginning of article
Below the fold w/ beginning of article
Below the fold blurb (one paragraph mention, article inside)
Mention in the "What's Inside" box

Sometimes there's just a picture (above or below), and they'll have the article inside. Not sure where that fits in the importance scale exactly.

― Keith C (lync0), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:43 (nineteen years ago)

A lot of these celebrity types might get the picture treatment.

― Super Cub (Debito), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:50 (nineteen years ago)

Page 1 obits so far this year (as far as I can tell, and I can't tell how many were above the fold):

Shirley Chisholm
Johnny Carson
Philip Johnson
Arthur Miller
Hans Bethe
George F. Kennan
Saul Bellow
Kenneth Clark
Peter Jennings
Simon Wiesenthal
August Wilson
William Rehnquist
Rosa Parks
Wellington Mara

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:55 (nineteen years ago)

Pierre Boulez.

― Eazy (Eazy), Monday, 5 December 2005 23:56 (nineteen years ago)

Didn't the Pope get a front page?

― ailsa (ailsa), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 00:00 (nineteen years ago)

he got a what's hot/what's not

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 00:04 (nineteen years ago)

Augusto Pinochet
Kirk Douglas
Charlton Heston
Barbara Bush

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 00:14 (nineteen years ago)

Oh yeah. The pope too. Not sure why my search didn't turn him up. It's possible the news story about his death went front page but the actual humungous obit went inside.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 00:14 (nineteen years ago)

David Attenborough (1926)
Richard Attenborough (1923)

― StanM (StanM), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 11:55 (nineteen years ago)

hitler!

(also glenn miller)

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

three years pass...

stan lee wooooo

― there was zarana (tremendoid), Wednesday, 28 January 2009 09:21 (sixteen years ago)

Ariel Sharon will never be allowed to die.

― James Mitchell, Wednesday, 28 January 2009 10:00 (sixteen years ago)

We never started fact-checking these! Pretty sure this is the full list of all those who have died since being posted, not counting those who were already rolling tearfully in their graves while people speculated about whether their deaths would be important:

Gerald Ford
Margaret Thatcher
Milton Friedman
Paul Newman
James Brown
Marcel Marceau
Norman Mailer
Robert Rauschenberg
Ingmar Bergman
Kurt Vonnegut
Saddam Hussein
Harold Pinter
John Updike
Robert Altman (there is an unspecified WAGER on him upthread!!)
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Studs Terkel
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
W. Mark Felt
Jean Baudrillard
Karlheinz Stockausen
Bo Diddley
Beverly Sills
Samuel P. Huntington
Clifford Geertz
Augusto Pinochet
Charlton Heston

― nabisco, Wednesday, 28 January 2009 14:15 (sixteen years ago)

OOPS sorry, don't know how I accidentally left Thatcher in there -- I think that's the only cut-and-paste accident, though

― nabisco, Wednesday, 28 January 2009 14:16 (sixteen years ago)

― Mare Street tour guide (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 28 January 2009 14:17 (sixteen years ago)

A mod can feel free to remove that so that British people don't get prematurely excited and start breaking out the party hats only to have their hopes crushed by the correction

― nabisco, Wednesday, 28 January 2009 14:18 (sixteen years ago)

updike didnt get above-the-fold but he had the misfortune of dying at a particularly newsworthy time period

― max, Wednesday, 28 January 2009 14:21 (sixteen years ago)

NY people do get an edge, but it's because they resonate with living New Yorkers. I'd bet that Neil Simon has more resonance these days than Yogi Berra.
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, December 5, 2005 6:30 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ by the way, if the price of living on the upper east side is that you start to believe things like this, ill stick with new jersey, thank you

― max, Wednesday, 28 January 2009 14:22 (sixteen years ago)

"shoe-in" argh

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 28 January 2009 14:24 (sixteen years ago)

two years pass...

Wait 'til Elizabeth Taylor goes!!

― andy --, Monday, December 5, 2005 3:18 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_likckwaqQz1qzaaklo1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1301069065&Signature=mQAgr%2FeiyIb0B7e1LGlJlC4QA38%3D

― max, Thursday, 24 March 2011 16:04 (fourteen years ago)

i append every NYT story with ":Should We Care?" now

― buzza, Thursday, 24 March 2011 16:26 (fourteen years ago)

hahahahaha that is a fun game

― max, Thursday, 24 March 2011 16:26 (fourteen years ago)

Radioactive Iodine Exceeds Level for Infants

― max, Thursday, 24 March 2011 16:27 (fourteen years ago)

Liz's Obit Was Written by Guy Who Died 5 Years Ago... Should We Care?

― Fuck bein' hard, Dr Morbz is complicated (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:08 (fourteen years ago)

i like the nyt frontpage layout compared to say

http://i.imgur.com/BPd0d.jpg

― kid 606: the nultness (nakhchivan), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:26 (fourteen years ago)

"Lustrous Pinnacle"?????

― Thraft of Cleveland (Bill Magill), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:28 (fourteen years ago)

fucking editors choosing that smirking retard for a front page pic rather than elizabeth t...........

― kid 606: the nultness (nakhchivan), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:28 (fourteen years ago)

anyway, re first post, Yogi might go above the fold (added folk hero points) but Willie Mays will for sure.

― Fuck bein' hard, Dr Morbz is complicated (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 24 March 2011 20:13 (fourteen years ago)

seven years pass...

not above the fold, but Carol Channing made page one, cuz she was p much The Last Broadway Star. Hers is longer than many heads of states'.

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 16 January 2019 15:51 (six years ago)

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