Pope-a-palooza!

Over the last week, I feel like we've been bombarded with more dead Pope coverage than I think is necessary. I know the man was a moral and religious leader to millions and I won't deny him his due props. I'm just talking about the way our media glamorizes death. Most news outlets literally couldn't wait for him to die. In fact, Fox News Channel mistakenly broke the story a FULL DAY early. Is it a reflection of our own morbid curiosity? And if so, when and how did we develop this hunger for bad news? I remember when Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his wife and unborn son, there was a crowd gathered around the break room television at the office where I used to work. When the verdict was announced, one woman came out of there running past my cubicle and screeching in a sick sort of glee. I guess we just really get caught up in this kind of stuff.

It's sad because it seems like a lot of the people who pretend to care so much about the Pope now that he's dead probably knew him as little more than a nice old man who wore big ornate hats and spoke in Latin before massive crowds of foreign people. Maybe that's true, maybe not. It just seems that way. At least, it served to distract the nation from its bizarre fascination with the whole Terry Schiavo debacle. Forget about all the serious questions it raised. No sooner were they pulling the feeding tube from her stomach, they were inserting one into the Pope's nose. And with those pre-processed nutritional calories went the world's attention.