April 05, 2005

Lock him up

"The World Mourns"--if I read that headline one more time I'll have a brain aneurysm. Who's mourning exactly? Are you? Is anyone you know? It's a safe bet the world's Muslims aren't mourning, or the Jews or Buddhists, or even the non-Catholic Christians. I'll go out on a limb and put Africa's millions of AIDs orphans, whose ranks the Pope helped swell through his war against condoms, in the non-mourning column.
      Me, I'm about as far from mourning as a human can be. I think they should take the him off that weird corpse-displaying couch thing and throw his dead body in jail. Crimes against humanity. Okay, I know there are progressives and women's groups working for the reform of the church, and I wish them luck. Just like I would wish luck to any African American group seeking to reform the KKK.
      Also sick of the informative little sidebars about "What happens next at the Vatican?" I'll tell you what happens next: A bunch of geriatric closet cases in funny hats will get together in secret for forty days and forty nights (or whatever) then send up their little smoke signal. It will be announced that the new pope is from country X. There will be reports about how much this means to the people of country X. Then Daniel Schorr will say something.
      Christ, I hope they choose someone less awful. World mourns? A more accurate headline would be "Skeptical world waits to see if science-hating pedophile club takes opportunity to pull head out of medieval ass"