Your attention please!

The Pope is still dead.

CNN has basically been covering the Pope's death and funeral non-stop since last week. Watching it, you'd think that no other news happened since then. The only break I've seen was Larry King interviewing Jane Fonda and someone else.

You know, it's a good thing that:

• We're not currently involved in a war in the Middle East
• Tom DeLay has not been embroiled in yet another scandal.
• Tom DeLay did not claim Congress has authority over the judicial system and makes vague threats against them, possibly including impeachment for ruling in ways he doesn't agree with.
• Sixteen people were not killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, the most serious such incident since the 2001 invasion.

I'm not saying the death and funeral of the Pope aren't newsworthy. I'm just saying that it's not the only important thing that happened in the world this week. This level of coverage is totally out of proportion.

Furthermore, it seems the coverage (which I can't bring myself to watch, non-stop so this may be in there) has been basically glowingly complementary to the Pope. Virtually nothing about how the Catholic Church basically ignored the pedophelia scandal in its ranks. Cardinal Law (see scandal, above) gave one of the Masses in the Pope's honor. Nothing about how many tens of thousands have died all over the world because the Church maintains it's a sin to use a condom, even in a marriage where one spouse is HIV+. Nothing about how the Pope recently called gay people part of "a new ideology of evil."

Are the other 24-hour news-like networks devoting this level of coverage to the late Pope? (I only get CNN.)