Trust me, you're better off for having missed this. The American media had this fixation with this brain-dead woman who's husband wanted to take her off life support.

The right wing loonies came out in force to try (and fail) to get a court injunction to put her back on life support. It was the most irritating 2 weeks of news I'd seen.

Then, when that was over, they shifted their ghoulish death watch to the pope. God knows what they're going to cover now that he's dead.

The hype was impossible to miss.

Some of it was funny to read about: the crazy protestors, loony fringe; other stuff was disgraceful: the president and congress acting as if was more important than events that kill thousands of people.

That's it in a nutshell. Bush cut his vacation short and flew back to Washington to sign legislation written for only one person. (To get around the constitutional prohibition against that, they said it applied to all people who are the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo.)