It’s not that the media is ignoring the story, Jody, its just that there are so many more important subjects to report on. For example, according to Google the number of news stories posted between yesterday and today on Pope Benedict almost reaches two hundred (see chart below) while reporting on the death of Michael Jackson—the most important story of our lifetime!—exceeds five thousand.

The Vicar of Christ is the religious leader of only 1.13 billion people while the King of Pop was the spiritual leader for everyone on the planet. It’s natural, therefore, that there would be a gap in the coverage. Still, a 2,500 percent difference seems a bit . . . disproportional.

But its not just the media. The chart below shows the volume of search traffic on Google for Michael Jackson, Pope Benedict, and ABC’s reality show “the Bachelor.”

The red line is Jackson, the blue line is “The Bachelor”, and the yellow line is Pope Benedict. What’s that, you don’t see a yellow line? That’s because in comparison with the other two, the volume of traffic for the Pope isn’t even enough to show up on the scale.

Perhaps the next encyclical could be released as a reality show instead of a text document. At least then maybe Americans would give it their attention.