I perceive all this media coverage of single deaths, trials, etc. as bread and circuses for the masses, keeping attention well away from congressional manipulation, opague politial agendas, and the worldwide problems that are out there every day, thousands of people dying, many needlessly, in this unbalanced world of ours, polution rampant, civil liberties on the block.

What better than to focus, then, on media circuses with massive, nonstop attention to a Michael Jackson trial, the death of a single woman, braindead for 15 years, or even the Pope. I take nothing away from the good he brought about, but my local county paper devoted 6 full pages of huge photos, plus a little text, last Sunday...the entire front page section. Not a word for the deaths in Iraq, much let alone in the Sudan, not a word about gutted school programs, nothing about anything else happening in the whole world!, good or bad. Even if I were Catholic, I would see that as massive ... overkill.