Just like James Brown, Buckwheat, my job prospects at Gawker, and the hopes and dreams of my generation.

Gerald Ford, people, is still dead. The Seventies are truly over.

What’s the latest scoop on the Dead President front? Perhaps, like Toby Crooke, wicked sexton of the charming town of Golden Friars, his body will lie in state for a time, after which it will be stolen away by a mysterious, swashbuckling foreigner on the back of a huge, black horse. Perhaps, maybe even probably, but after that?

Let’s ask Hunter S. Thompson, who knew the man. From his obituary of Richard Milhous Nixon:

Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that “I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon…”

Let us not pretend we didn’t see the end coming. We always knew Ford‘s death would be heralded by strange portents (thanks to Miss Cellania for portent-link) and wreathed in paradox and mystery.

The paradox and mystery, from Former Frontier Editor:

Gerald R. Ford, 93, Dies; Led in Watergate’s Wake

By J.Y. Smith and Lou Cannon
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, December 27, 2006; 10:18 AM

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., 93, who became the 38th president of the United States as a result of some of the most extraordinary events in U.S. history and sought to restore the nation’s confidence in the basic institutions of government, has died. His wife, Betty, reported the death in a statement last night.

“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age,” Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage, Calif. “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.”

Ford died at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday (PST) at his home in Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, his office said. No cause of death was given. Ford had battled pneumonia in January and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester…

J.Y. Smith, a former obituary editor of The Washington Post, died in January.

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