From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

If you're a person who has TV news on all day in the background,

your occasional upward glance would have marked this week's biggest small-screen story

as the funeral of a 94-year-old man who was once president of the United States.

He fancied himself to be a good bass singer.

He was not.

We'll sing for our president.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

He was born to power and spent his life wielding it,

but if not for those four years in the White House,

the cameras would never have fixed so firmly all week long on his body in transit,

flying up from Houston to D.C., lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda,

gracing the Washington Cathedral, lifting off from Joint Base Andrews,

landing at Houston's Ellington Field and traveling still.

Nice to sing the road of the hall. landing at Houston's Ellington Field and traveling still.

Halting at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, rolling by motorcade to the Union Pacific Railway facility, rumbling by special train through small towns to college station, pausing at Texas A&M University, and finally dropping anchor at the

George Bush Presidential Library and Museum for eternity.

It seemed to go on for a long, long time, but it was not unusual.

I'm guessing that the endless stream of short, sharp shocks delivered by the news the last two years

has left us too frantic

...