The Smoking Gun has a beauty today.

While all news organizations prepare obituaries in advance of the deaths of famous individuals, the folks at CNN inadvertently gave the Internet-surfing public a chance to preview how the network's web site would note the demise of Vice President Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, and a few other prominent figures. Until earlier this afternoon, a CNN server housed mock-ups of web pages announcing the yet-to-happen deaths. The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed (though TSG was able to grab a few of the pages for posterity's sake).

The obits TSG has use similar templates to each other, based on the obit page they did for the Queen Mother last year. I don't know about anyone else, but I think it's screamingly funny to see Fidel Castro described as "[the] UK's favourite grandmother" and to see his picture accompany the headline text "'Life is just one grand sweet song, so start the music': For much of Ronald Reagan's life, the words next to his high-school yearbook photo rang true." The Bob Hope and Pope ones, with a death date of 2001 on them, are even more hilarious. Apparently they were the UK's favourite grandmother as well. Brilliant.

posted by James Russell | 8:58 PM