In a bit of meta-meta-news yesterday, I reported on the report on the 35,000 reports about the Pope. If you are wondering how one squeezes 35,000 stories out an of event that could be summed up in sentence, you are missing the obvious answer: triviality. For example, we now know that many couples, in many localities, had met the Pope:
- In Vermont: Local Couple Friends With Pope
- In Florida: Local Couple Met the Pope in 2001
- In North Carolina: Local Couple Met With Pope)
- In Kentucky: Local Couple Who Met Pontiff Mourn Death
- In Utica, New York: Local Couple ‘Mesmerized’ by Meeting With Pope
This one (which was, I’d like to point out, the top story on Google News for a while) left me a little puzzled:
Trivial? Perhaps. But also informative. For example, I didn’t even know the Pope wore felt!
It seems strikingly similar to those “normal person does obvious thing” stories that The Onion seems to like so much.