"sadder than McKinley's funeral"

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        Last night I heard Kenny Washington, a local disk-jockey, talking
about a situation he deplored, say: "folks, it's sadder than
McKinley's funeral."  This is a new expression to me, and
logophiliac that I am, I was delighted by it.  I assume that the
McKinley in question was our still-lamented president.  His funeral
was just about 100 years ago, and so beyond the memory of most of
us, and certainly before Washington's time, who is a relatively
young man.  It's hard to believe that this phrase has stayed
underground for a century.  Washington is a musician, a drummer --
his radio show is his day job -- and he specializes in the
traditional forms of jazz; he is also a historian and record
collector.  So he may have heard the expression from a much older
musician, one who could have heard it himself from people who did
remember McKinley's funeral, or he may have encountered it in an
interview published decades ago.  It also occurred to me that this
might be a softening of a phrase like "*sadder than Kennedy's
funeral" (which to be sure I have never heard either); something that
it might have seemed ill-advised or tactless to say on air.

GAT