National Right to Life posts, then deletes message about supposed death of Mitch McConnell

Somebody at National Right to Life hit publish on a canned obituary for a man who was, as far as anyone can confirm, still alive on Saturday. Then they hit delete. That sequence tells you almost everything you need to know about how modern advocacy groups actually operate: pre-written statements sitting in a drafts folder, ready to fire the second a wire alert comes through, except this time the alert never came.

We're not going to pretend this is some grand scandal. It's an embarrassing mistake, the kind that happens when organizations optimize for speed over accuracy. But it's also a small window into something bigger. Groups across the political spectrum keep "in case of death" statements loaded and ready for aging senators, and the temptation to be first with the tribute has apparently gotten ahead of the temptation to check whether the person is actually dead. McConnell has had well-documented health scares. That's exactly the environment where a trigger-happy communications staffer jumps the gun.

The deeper irony is that National Right to Life owes McConnell plenty of genuine gratitude, three Supreme Court confirmations worth of it, and that history is what made the premature eulogy read as sincere rather than satirical. Nobody thinks this was malicious. It was sloppy. In an attention economy where being first matters more than being right, even the people writing your obituary can't be bothered to confirm you're gone first.

Groups that want to be taken seriously on matters of life and death might start by getting the basic fact of someone's death right before they start mourning it.