If one does not watch television news, for whatever the reason, events like the pope's death are simply a flutter in one's peripheral vision. Newspapers and blogs allow one to share in commentary on the meaning of the event and so get at causes and effects. But as for the spectacle and the wash of emotion, the opening day of baseball season is more real, more vivid to me.
I am addicted to certain emotions in motion but not to others. Same kind of selective ignorance for Reagan's death. Lesson one for beginning reporters is how wrong phrases like "The world mourned" or "The nation cheered" are. Only laziness or cowardice or cynicism produces such generalizations. What contempt for language and for the intelligence of those who read you.
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