If you haven’t already heard of it, “Meerkat Manor” is a nature show about a family of meerkats, narrated as though it were a prime-time soap opera. It’s hilarious and touching, a half-hour long, and suitable for families. However, it also involves a lot of casual, unmarried sex (I guess meerkats don’t have religions or souls). Anyway, the matriarch of the clan died protecting her cubs from a cobra, and people are really sad about it.
The NY Times has an obituary, of sorts: “What the outpouring of sentiment that has followed says about the present character of American emotional life is disillusioning. Thousands have outlined the particularities of their sadness on Internet message boards, some claiming they haven’t cried so much since they lost a parent.”
Let me remind you: this is a wild animal living its natural life in its natural habitat which has been eaten by a natural predator.
Secretly Ironic 