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© St. Petersburg Times, published April 22, 2003
Ah, Dick Cheney, we hardly knew ye. We didn't even know ye were dead. But there last week was the vice president, "loyal point man for two Bush presidencies," being eulogized in a publicly accessible portion of the CNN Web site. So were these extant public figures: Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela and Gerald Ford ("I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln").
The obituary mockups weren't intended for the light of day, and the type on them was all a-jumble. For example, the Castro obituary borrowed an old Reagan ditty: "Life is just one grand sweet song, so start the music."
But the practice obits were discovered by fark.com through a Google search before CNN yanked them. TheSmokingGun.com has posted them for posterity.