About ten years ago, I created a Google alert so I’d know the moment James Dobson died. Sometimes an obituary would pop up, but it was always for some other James or Dobson — a benign stranger. On Thursday morning, my inbox was empty, and then I saw the news on Slack. A few minutes after that, a friend texted: “JAMES DOBSON IS DEAD!!!!!” I looked at X and read the headline again. I started to believe it. My husband walked into the room, where I sat on our bed, and I told him. He said he’d bring me Champagne that night. I told my mother. My Google alert went off at last, and I started to write a eulogy that I’ve been planning since I was 10.
To almost everyone else, James Dobson was the founder of Focus on the Family, a co-founder of the Family Research Council and the shadowy Arlington Gr