What an interesting sight: an Israeli president sitting in front of a Syrian president with an Iranian president to top off the trimuverate. But there they were at the Pope’s funeral, shaking hands.

Of course, the official line was that the handshaking was not really handshaking, or more accurately, it was only done in the “Christian tradition” and since everybody had become Catholic on Friday, I suppose it wasn’t out of place for the universal greeting of peace to take place between three sworn enemies. The Israeli president even spoke with Hatami, the president of Iran, "at length" about their shared hometown of Yazd, and in the Persian language. That didn’t stop Iranian officials from denying that such a conversation even took place at all.

I was amazed, really, that for a brief moment, everybody that was anybody appeared at the funeral of the pontiff: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and more. Despite the heavy media coverage and the phony gravitas of the media whores, it honestly seemed that for an instant, everybody was just one. Period. I found the attendance of so many heads of state were there. I mean, Prince Charles, future supreme governor of the Church of England, that Protestant breakway, deferred his wedding date to attend the funeral of a Roman leader. How odd, but strangely, a hopeful oddity.

It’s too bad the goodwill won’t last.

I am not mocking the death of Pope John Paul II, but curiously standing on the sidelines watching the media ratchet up the engines of emotion into overdrive and push everyone into a frenzy of mourning.

This reminds me of the Terri Schiavo case, where the media overplayed its hand and made it seem like thousands of protesters were on hand in Florida, or that the country was "deeply divided" over the case. Hard to make that assessment if poll after poll suggested two-thirds of the country favored letting the woman pass quietly, effectively siding with the husband.

Instead of following the phrase, “death with dignity,” we’ve been treated to a macabre spectacle and a crisis-in-the-making. I’m not denying that the death of a pope isn’t news or significant; rather, I’m curious as to why the news is informing me that the entire world is in mourning, when I’m looking out the window of my apartment and I don’t see the weeping, wailing or the gnashing of teeth. Some individuals have remarked that it’s sad, but mourning? Hardly.

Whipping people into a frenzy is an easy journalistic exercise. Again, look at Terri Schiavo, where the ghoulish death watch turned in to an obscene farce. By the time Mrs. Schiavo had died, I found myself getting tired of the story and even more tired of her parents, and I don’t say that lightly, because in the end, they were dealing with the death of their child. That kind of grief neither requires nor deserves comment, but I grew weary of hearing them pleading for everybody to intervene on their behalf, perhaps oblivious to the ugly machinations of scumbag politicians who live to make private sorrow into their personal gain.

But politicians don’t do such things, do they?