terrshee's Diaryland Diary

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Death Watch in the News

I'm feeling weird about the banality and repetition involved in the death watch for John Paul II. I was having my nails done yesterday and Fox News just kept saying the same thing over and over for the half hour intersperced with advertising and a few snippets about Terri Schiavo. Give me a break. Surely there is something else of importance and/or interest going on in the world? Then I was stuck in traffic for two hours on the B/W Parkway listening to NPR, which wasn't nearly as bad, but certainly didn't add much to anything said earlier in the day. How often can you hear that a crowd of tens of thousands is well-behaved and thoughtful? Ah well, I have to remember that most people only hear the news for a few minutes a day.

In some sense I suppose we want to be witnesses to history, and it is important to know the details, but most news organizations don't do a very good job of conveying the solemnity. Perhaps it is because they deal with the trivial and transitory day in and day out.

I wonder if the human psyche retreats into cliches and commonplaces when confronted with the passing of greatness because that is the only way to handle it? On one level it is just another human being and one we don't know in a personal sense. On another, we do know at least some of the impact such a person has had on the world. I expect when I die the ripples will be small and of short duration, but here is someone who will be profoundly missed. There's a lot I disagree with in the teachings of the Catholic church, but at least I believe him to be a man of principle and faith, and to have tried to work for peace and human dignity. That's more than most of us can say.

6:58 a.m. - 2005-04-02
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past tense - always tense - future tense