Kirk Cameron: CNN Science correspondent

Zillions of birds have been dropping from the sky while boat loads of fish have washed up on the shore.  Rivers of birds and oceans of fish I guess.  Anyway, who does Anderson Cooper fetch to give some insight into this?  Why, Kirk Cameron of course.  Because Cameron is a scientist, veterinarian, or ecologist?  Heck no. Because he is a former sitcom star who is famously a born again Christian who is now making movies based on the rather theologically vacant Left Behind series.  That's all you need!

Terry Mattingly at Get Religion has some fun with it, wondering why exactly Cooper and CNN would think Cameron would represent some widespread notion that the apocalypse is happening.  For his part, Mr. Cameron seemed to share the same 'what the heck?' view of why he was even on there. 

But a reader, michael, points to a more sinister reason that Cooper and company might decide the best way to delve into this mysterious phenomenon is to pull out ex-sitcom actors who happen to be religious to discuss a theory so wacky no serious religious person would give it a second thought:

It bears repeating. This is how (sometimes even good) journalism helps to keep religion in its place in a secular society, by rendering it banal…albeit not without plenty of help.

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict just gave a remarkable speech to the assembled diplomatic corps of 181 countries with ties to the Holy See (a remarkable thing in its own right). It was on the nature of the human being as homo religiosus and how the precarious state of religious freedom throughout the world therefore threatens what is most human in us. It is serious food for thought, at the very least. But you would never know it from watching the news or reading the papers where it remains all but invisible.