Wednesday, April 15, 2009

TV Installation

The installation of Timothy Dolan as Archbishop of the New York Catholic Church took over the airwaves. This is news because this ceremony has not been done in NY for decades because all other transitions have happened when the former Archbishops died in office.

I watched the ABC coverage because they had a color commentator dropping little facts such as:

  • There are 23 branches of Catholicism under the Pope
  • Each branch is distinguished by the bishops hats (gold, black,...)
  • Eastern Orthodox Catholics are represented but do not follow this Pope
  • The Popes letter of appointment must be read in ceremony to be official
  • Parts of the ceremony were in Spanish without translation
  • Prayers were read in a dozen languages
  • No one but bishops are aloud to sit in the cool gold seat on the altar
  • Dolan has precided over an outdoor homily briefly with a Green Bay Cheesehead hat

Other curiosities include today is Tax Day, which did not escape the church officials as they made some jokes of it. Also it's still Passover and while many Jewish officials are there in support they can not greet him on the altar. The longest applaud was when Dolan recertified the church's position on the sanctity of life. It is still Easter by the way.

To interrupt 3 1/2 hours of programs for a religious ceremony is unique among New Yorkers. In Los Angeles TV is often interrupted by car chases and nationwide only for grand disasters but rarely for church ceremonies. Often I said the real heartland of America is NYC, it's why we are constant targets form all sides. Seeing such a unique thing reminds me why TV is still relevent because checking some news sites on the internet does not even mention this in the top 10 news stories of the day. Local news can be silly but occasionaly they do pull off stories without the ignorance or arrogance that pundits and internet trolls often bring.

3 comments:

  1. Do hate that when "something" takes over all the channels... before we had Sky TV (satellite), we had just the five UHF channels. If something big "broke", like a Royal death or an armed siege, all 5 channels would switch to live broadcasts of it, and you were left with nothing to watch!

    Do you know, as soon as I saw that picture with the "cheese head" hat, I knew exactly what it was... that's what you get for watching imports of "According to Jim" so much!

    ;-)

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  2. I usually don't mind the breaking story or special event since the Korean channel always comes through with their own stuff it is the last refuse when desperate.

    "According to Jim" this show has been on for a decade I've seen about 3 episodes. Coincidentally during the night of the Installation the only new show was According to Jim and I watched it.

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  3. I like watching the Japanese game shows that they sometimes have available on the aeroplanes when we fly to America and back. Great stuff!

    "According to Jim" did follow the traditional "family sit-com" stories, and they'd all been done by other shows already, but it was still pretty good none the less. Shame it's finished now.

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