The Greatest Show on Earth

You probably didn't hear about this, since it is an obscure little news story buried in the back pages of your local fish-wrap (that would be "newspaper" for the Jim Rome-impaired), but apparently a woman named Anna Nicole Smith collapsed and died in our own backyard.

Again, you've probably been distracted by the incessant barrage of updates on the genocide in Darfur, or the continued global insouciance toward Iran's nuclear arms race, but believe it or not Anna Nicole is dead. And the world wants to know!

The world wants to know so badly that three helicopters have been parked over my house in the hopes that they will catch someone (maybe Smith's mummified body) walking out of the courthouse. And while the sound of the helicopters was bad enough to drive me to do an internet search for the schematics of a Howitzer cannon, what really set me off was my recent foray through downtown Fort Lauderdale.

As I drove down the street where the church that I pastor meets, I ran into a road block. It seems as though every camera and microphone in the news world was parked in front of the Broward County Courthouse. For nothing.

I don't know what's more sad: our rabid obsession with all this, or the fact that this deceased woman led such a tragic life.