Not Soon Enough

Associated Press headline:

President Carter Talks of Funeral Plans

Sorry, while we wish the ex-President no harm, some headlines write themselves. The story goes on to explain:

Former President Jimmy Carter said Sunday he hopes to be buried in front of his home in Plains, the southwest Georgia town where he and his wife were born.

"Plains is special to us," the 82-year-old said during a three-hour live C-SPAN2 interview. "I could be buried in Arlington Cemetery or wherever I want, but my wife was born here and I was born here."

As a child, Carter briefly lived next door to Rosalynn, and the two began dating in 1945. The couple married the next year and in July celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

"Plains is where our hearts have always been," he said.

Carter said there are also plans for a funeral in Washington as well as a brief display of his body in Atlanta.

It's just as well that he plans several public displays, as that will give us an opportunity to make sure the son-of-a-bitch is dead.

Mr. Carter, always in the running for the title of "Worst President of the United States," has long since retired the trophy as "Worst Ex-President." His post White House career has been one long anti-American campaign, as he shuttles between murderous dictators (Castro) and murderous terrorists (Arafat). His anti-Americanism is exceeded only by his implacable opposition to Israel, a careless contempt which we suppose is explicable as merely derivative of his desire to bathe in the praise of anyone and everyone who hates America.

Any person of merely ordinary self-regard would promptly have understood that he was being exploited by America's enemies not because of his wise and penetrating political insights, but simply because an ex-President makes a great backdrop for trashing America. Jimmy seems actually to believe they think he's a great guy. He doesn't understand that the mean girls are making fun of him behind his back.

Now we learn that he'd like to be buried in his front yard, possibly in the begonia bed. Zoning and public-health questions aside, this seems a bit odd, rather like poor Jeremy Bentham, who reposes in the lobby of University College, London. And think of the security issues: Such a shrine will inevitibly become a place of holy pilgrimage for terrorists, washed-up dictators, international thugs, UN anti-Semites, African kleptocrats, and the like. We leave it to others to imagine how to stock the gift shop (little suicide-bomber dolls? a photographic collage of the American hostages mixed in with Jimmy in his cardigan?).

We shudder.