Nah, who am I kidding?

As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch

By Jay Price and Qasim Zein, McClatchy Newspapers

NAJAF, Iraq — At what’s believed to be the world’s largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn’t good.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that’s cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq .

“I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead,” said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. “People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don’t talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more.”

Ok, so the new bad news from Iraq is that cemeteries aren’t as busy as before… Did anyone read this before they actually, ya know, ran with it? Here’s basically what the media’s saying: If the death toll is high, we’ll report a horrible situation due to the number of deaths. If the death toll is low, we’ll report it as a horrible situation because cemeteries are losing business. When did the media become Goldi Locks?

H/t LGF.