More on Mrs. Jones' Obituary...

Lolis Elie of the New Orleans Times-Picayune spoke with Melba Kovalak, one of Gertrude M. Jones' daughters, who confirmed that the deceased was a lifelong Democrat who, though she didn't exactly hate George W. Bush, felt he "probably wasn't up to speed for being a president." Kovalak seems to think the anti-Bush memorial request was indeed instigated by Jones herself, who spent the last year of her life in several different hospitals and nursing homes. "I think she heard about it as an obituary in one of those places," she told Elie. Which still doesn't explain the tardiness of the October 2 death notice, nor the inconsistencies between it and the notice published in the Louisville Courier-Journal a month earlier which didn't mention G.W. Bush at all.

One possible explanation is that the two notices were placed at different times by different family members who didn't consult one another (or perhaps even disagreed) on the details.

Jon Donley, editor of Nola.com, the Web edition of the Times-Picayune, stresses the point that strictly speaking both items are death notices, not obituaries — the difference being that obituaries are composed and fact-checked by newspaper staff, while death notices are paid listings similar to classified ads and "can say pretty much whatever people want [them] to say."