Please, I beg of you, never let my obituary read like this

From CNN's U.S. edition on Friday, December 2, 2011: "Deliverance actor Bill McKinney dies."

But of course, that's not the worst of it. No. While it might be tragic enough as an actor to be best known for a role played nearly 40 years ago, to add pain to your posthumous honors, CNN leads with this teaser on the front page: "'Squeal' actor from Deliverance dies."

Squeal. As in, "like a pig." Yes, folks, that's how CNN--and I'm sure the estate of Mr. McKinney--would like you to remember the actor: As the man who anally assaults poor Ned Beatty's character, requesting in the process that he "squeal like a pig."

Thank heavens that my career is so unnoteworthy that I am unlikely to be remembered in this way. The limited pleasures of anonymity.

Some day, I may have to try to watch Deliverance again. I'm sure there must be a point to it, other than this horrific scene, which I recall watching through my fingers and never venturing much beyond this moment in the film's, uh, thrust.

So the point is . . . man's inhumanity against man? Scratch the surface of civilization, and we're easily transported back to our more primal selves? There's little that separates human beings from animals? (Figuratively, literally.) Country livin' ain't fer sissies? Never date a hillbilly whose opening line is "yew shore got a purty mouth"?

I'm sure there must have been some point to it.

While I'm scratching my ass--oops, I mean, my head--over that, in the meantime, I'll just stick with watching Paula Deen and her boys cook up some grub on the Food Network. That's about as close to "Southern primal" as I dare to get these days.