Pope

I'm one of the few bloggers, it seems, who find the cable news focus on the Pope fully justified, or at least far more justified than a brain-damaged woman in Florida. The Pope was a defining figure of my lifetime, and I'm not even a Catholic. I agreed with him (Iraq war, anti-death penalty), disagreed with him (homosexuality, abortion, representation of women), but he had a forceful personality and a moral gravitas unlike our current leaders worldwide. I think bringing on people whose captions read "met the Pope twice" is kind of ridiculous, but the conversation about this man is one I'd rather see CNN having. It may be boring to keep showing a static shot of St. Peter's Square with thousands of tiny ants assembled, but this is an undeniably big moment. And the debate it's sparking over the role of the church in world affairs, and the move into modernism, is key.

Any guy that forgives a man who shot him, that decides to visit a Holocaust museum and apologizes for his people's role in the slaughter, was OK in my book.