The Axiom of Obvious
Over the past several weeks, it seemed as if 60 Minutes was gearing up to take another sweeps month swing at funeral service. A number of folks have reportedly been called by 60 Minutes researchers and asked various questions, but so far nothing has been scheduled. Several calls to CBS News did not produce a confirmation or a denial that such a profile was in the works. That just leaves one to speculate. After all, November is a huge TV ratings sweeps month.
It stands to reason that 60 Minutes might have been on the trail of one or more of several high profile funeral service stories that have been making the rounds in the consumer media.
The first was the very high profile rumblings in the U.S. House of Representatives on H.R. 3655, the Consumer’s Bill of Rights, which was voted out of committee and on to the full House of Representatives for consideration. As we know, the bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to issue a rule regulating cemeteries, crematories and all third-party sellers that sell funeral or burial goods or services to the public. The bill grew out of scandal at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill., in 2009, where four former employees allegedly dug up remains and dumped the bodies in order to resell the plots. The bill seems to be playing out a losing battle of legislative Beat the Clock with this Congress. While a vote on the bill is possible during the lame duck session after the mid-term elections, the lack of activity on the measure in the Senate seems to indicate that the bill will have to go back to the starting blocks next year.
More recently, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, dismissed a five-year-old antitrust lawsuit filed against Service Corporation International, Alderwoods Group (which has since been acquired by SCI), Batesville Casket and Stewart Enterprises. I am sure that the combination of the words “funeral service” and “anti-trust law suit” might have been of interest to the news services.
And then there is the latest news out of Arizona. OK, so the skulls and bones left exposed in a pit in Memory Gardens Cemetery might not have been from the traditional funeral –the fact is they were body parts entrusted to a funeral director for cremation and disposition by a medical research firm – but they were still someone’ loved ones. And regardless, they were still left exposed in a cemetery where people were in a position to stumble upon them — fortunately in this case it was figuratively not literally. According to published reports, the woman who discovered the pits were 15 yards from the marker she was looking for. All of which has the makings of a sensational TV news report.
While this case apparently does not run afoul of the letter of the law (police in Bisbee have said that no laws were broken here), but the one rule that was indisputably broken is one that I call the Axiom of Obvious. In this case, the Axiom of Obvious states that once a story such as this is made public, is starts to erode the public’s opinion of funeral service as a whole. Of course, this leaves all of us to ponder one question: How could anyone think that leaving an open pit of bones and skulls in a cemetery under any circumstances would be a good idea?
Meantime the watch is ticking.
