Are You Poped Out?

The coverage is relentless, the analysis idiotic, and it is going to go on for a long long time. How are you holding up?

If one more asshole explains the selection process to me, I am not responsible for what I do.

but now it's getting a bit old.

channeled surfed the news and found WOLF BLITZER doing a story about

SHARKS!!

And yes I am throughly Poped out.

911 coverage. After a month of that I was tearing my hair out. At least they have a variety of colorful and architecturally striking images for the Pope--he was a travellin' man, so there's no shortage of file footage, either--and the live shots of the Basilica are great--best way to keep sanity is to turn off the sound and listen to music. During the Sep 11 coverage, they showed those planes and the towers again and again, all day, every day, for what seemed like FOREVER.

And I prefer it to the Schiavo coverage, which again, suffered from serious image shortage. That same tape of her in the bed, the same still photos, and the same retards holding signs and making jackasses of themselves.

I'm personally enjoying the hell out of the Pope coverage, simply because they are showing 'my old neighborhood.' I used to hang out in and around the Basilica and the Piazza during the hotter months of the year. And I like the shots of the joint all lit up--it usually is dark and gloomy during the day, and when they aren't having a Mass (and even then they don't light up every corner like you see it on TV, except at big holidays, like XMAS and Easter). It looks kind of spiffy with all the lights on.

But of course, there's always Comedy Central if it gets too onerous!

At least the Pope wasn't 20 years removed from his job with only a handful of deluded right wingers giving a shit when he passed.

Like always, the media acts like Paranas in a pond. The extra comments from non-Catholics and ignorant commentators, are just insulting to the memory of a great Spiritual Leader. The fokers keep attaching the Pope to republican conservative icons (murderers).

Christ Mathews, a Catholic, was the worse. He didn't miss one moment of comparing the Pope to the likes of Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

CNN had Christian Amanpour, a Muslim, making all religious commentaries. I love Christian but making comments about the Pope did not taste well for me.

Fox had a so called journalist making Catholic comments, American-Jewish, who wrote a book about the Pope without ever meeting the Pope.

I guess, the underground Paranas, leaders of the Christian political ignorance, have not surfaced yet; Falwell, Graham, all the other nuts evangelicals followers of George Bush.

The media jackals poised and ready to pounce on the corpse of a man who stubbornly hung on for another day - probably to spite them all.

The next couple of days they'll have nothing to cover except the throngs filing past the body and speculation about who the new Pope will be.

You know the whores are getting pretty desperate for new material when they start to compare JPII with Reagan. I laughed out loud when Scarbrough and Tweety started in last night.

been dominating the news for the last month and it's only getting worse.

What other religious leader would EVER get 1/10th the amount of press in this country as the pope gets?? Make that 1/50th.

This is further proof of how much the Bush regime is in bed with the corporate media. It's all part of an orchestrated attempt to equate the Pope with Bush with the further spread of Democracy....so it opens the doors for Bushco to attack Iran or anyone else they see fit in the cause for freedom. Yeah, right. What a crock of bullshit.

I'm catholic, BTW (at one time, anyhow).

As far as the rituals go, he's been a good pope and deserves the attention.

I have a thing about the display of dead bodies. I don't go up to look in the coffin at funerals. I don't want people looking at my dead body when I'm gone, either.

the body is to be left as it is, treated with respect and dignity (which means not viewed by strangers), but is not considered to still "be" the person.

First--I agree that there is other news in the world they should not be ignoring.
And I think the non-stop coverage is overkill, unless it is an event like the procession to the Basilica or the funeral. They should pay a little attention to the rest of our world. At least the "America-centric", the whole world revolves around the US attitude is being broached for a moment--if only slightly.

And on the positive side, it is educational for people. You don't have to be a Catholic to get something out of this. To see bishops, rabbis, and imams showing respect and understanding toward one another has to be a good thing.

Not everyone watches the news nonstop. And since people work all different hours of the day or night and may take an interest--it is good they can catch the coverage at some point.

The only channel without wall-to-wall popenews is Nickelodeon.

Surely you can find something better to watch? :P

you shouldn't be watching those network "news" channels like Faux anyway.

that he gets the amount of press he does.

And on the positive side, it is educational for people. You don't have to be a Catholic to get something out of this.

Well I for one AM Catholic, and I don't get a thing out of all this. What has this man REALLY done for the world to garner such an obscene amount of our attention, other than to set the church back to midieval times. Maybe if he had modernized the church a little instead of suffocating its followers with such outdated conservative ideas, I would've been tempted to go to mass once in a blue moon.

And on the positive side, it is educational for people. You don't have to be a Catholic to get something out of this. To see bishops, rabbis, and imams showing respect and understanding toward one another has to be a good thing.

Showing respect is great, but this is far too much. And do you think for a fleeting minute that the same amount of respect and coverage would EVER be shown to a rabbi or imam following their passing? Not a chance.

:shrug:

I haven't really been watching it, but I hate TV anyway.

Go look around on the internet for the real news, and just ignore the Pope-related articles.

http://www.rawstory.com/
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm
http://slashdot.org/

I don't watch any main stream media. If I do I find myself yelling that the television. For this reason I have quit cold turkey. I'd much rather watch the Discovery Channel, and I get all the news I need from the internet. Works quite well actually. I only hear about the pope when I want to hear about him.

the pall bearers carrying the body through the masses was so medieval...like a scene from Zepherelli's 'Romeo & Juliet'. It was completely surreal.

And I only watch Jon & Keith. I can't imagine what it must be like if I still watched other news. At least BBC didn't give it beginning 2 end coverage....there was real news being reported....imagine!

I'm an atheist and knew that we'd see lots of coverage when JPII finally died (he was, after all, the world's most prominent Christian), but this is just too much.

Did we really need to see a live feed of the Pope's corpse on five different news channels last night?

I am sorry he passed sans the poison gas factory he worked in and the spread of aides the Pope perpetuated on the world through the no condoms thing. I feel sorry for Catholics now but hey they didn't understand the Jerry Garcia thing so...

I've seen some of the coverage, but there are other options.

Like the 2 DVD's from Netflix--adventures of Bertie Wooster & the incomparable Jeeves.

Other options: Read a book, do housework, take a walk, etc.

And that is WITH a virtual TV blackout ('cept for Food Network, which never fails to make me ravenous).

Just use the internet. I've been able to avoid the pope enough.

on Monday when it was reported that Poland wanted to have the Pope's heart to bury in Poland. How would anybody suggest such a thing in this day and age? I was grossed out.

Last week, the finger in the chili. Now they wanted to take a part of the Pope's body. Sorry, that just suggests mutilation of a dead body to me!

or am I too poped to poop?

I dont even know anymore!

(thats an 'I Love Lucy' reference!)

The Pope may of been a great leader, but let's remember that he favored the continued oppression of women.

He IS, after all, dead. That means that this circus con't go on. They can milk it for all they're (he's) worth, and more. But eventually it DOES have to end. As warped and bizarro world as our Concensus Reality has gotten, it still isn't Groundhog Day. May feel like it, but it isn't.

I was poped out to the max well before it was clear he was dying. I'm so over the top you wouldn't be able to find me if you were looking for my whereabouts.

between now and the funeral on Friday.

I mean, how many times can we cut to the live feed of countless faces filing past his decaying body? I'm guessing more than we've seen so far. Which is really sad.

There's more important news to cover, especially in our own country, which might actually save lives instead of wasting time lamenting over one ended life.

:evilgrin:

Every major media outlet -- TV and print -- is superglued on Pope-setting.

Obviously, his passing and accompanying rituals do have historic value impact, but there's only so much one can take!

I've got lots of Pope criticisms on my blog (from a Buddhist perspective), but I think from a cultural, anthropological perspective this pope coverage is absolutely rivetting.

See my blog for more.

If the media is going to relentlessly fixate on someone, then it's best they fixate on someone worthwhile and meaningful like John Paul II, and not some freakshow like Michael Jackson. The repetitive coverage gets tedious after a while, but then, that's why God made only three 24-hour news channels and ten thousand other channels ;)

but between the Schiavo thing and now this... we ARE being DRONED!!

I can understand a considerable amount of coverage, but there's NOTHING else on! I have a Dish so I can watch alternative programs.

Skipping to the funeral really wouldn't be a bad idea/