It was a momentous week with big stories — political and geopolitical. If you were paying attention, it was enough to make your head spin. But no one was paying the slightest attention, at least among the electronic media fraternity. For TV, it was all Pope, all the time.

So, the crash-and-burn of Scott Walker barely registered. The Wisconsin scourge of teachers and their union, once the favorite acolyte of the brothers Koch, was at zero in the polls after a gaggle of gaffes, such as suggesting that being mean to Midwestern school marms made him ready to crush ISIS like a grape.

Hillary Clinton, hopelessly enmeshed like Laocoon in the coils of her email troubles, now trails Bernie Sanders by double digits in the early primary states. Even women voters have begun to abandon her. But she too was merely a news afterthought.

The president of China came to the White House and agreed with President Obama that the two counties would cooperate on climate change and cybersecurity. Groundbreaking, if true. Unlikely to be for real, but in any case blown off the world stage by a 78-year-old Argentinian Jesuit. Superpowers grappling? Who cares?

Even John Boehner, bailing out of a Republican Party at war with itself amid the latest threat of a government shutdown, was only news because his sudden retirement decision was said to be the result of divine intervention, a tear-stained meeting with, yes, him again — The Pope.

In other worlds, the electronic media was doing what it always does, acting like it had a bad case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. TV seizes on something it can aim a camera at and then keeps on pointing and babbling until everyone is thoroughly sick of the spectacle, or until the next shiny object comes along.

Not so long ago, the cameras obsessed about black lives mattering for a few weeks until a new sensation came along to exploit. For awhile pitiful Syrian refugees drowning or caged or weeping became the latest subject for wall-to-wall TV, but soon they were muscled aside by the Trump circus.

The Donald must be really miffed that the Pope managed to make him into yesterday’s news as soon as he put the shoes of the fisherman on Cuban soil. In point of fact, there wasn’t really much visual interest in a rotund, bald, soft-spoken old man in satiny white vestments speaking hesitant, accented English at The White House, the Capitol and the U.N.

But TV had decided to obsess about his visit, so it obsessed from “Today” at dawn to “Charlie Rose” after midnight. In between there were incredibly tedious hours devoted to watching Il Papa walk down a corridor as the press scrum of the TV reporters and cameramen walked backwards, televising all the way. We got to watch his plane sit on the tarmac, or a Fiat with an aquarium mounted on top put-put through Central Park.

Every public person who had ever learned his or her catechism was soon hogging airtime and jostling to touch the hem of the Pope’s raiment. When the Pope’s progress wasn’t on screen, Catholic pundits and broadcasters were interviewing Catholic clergy. The screen was awash with hyperbole concerning the Pope’s saintly mix of humility and modernity.

Commentators seemed taken aback that a Pope would suggest sinners ought to be forgiven, priests ought not to molest children, humans should be treated decently, the poor and refugees should be succored. Awe and surprise were expressed that the church should regard war as bad and peace good, or embrace the idea that caring for the planet might be morally desirable or that capitalist greed and gluttony might be regarded as questionable.

Now the Pope has flapped away and will soon be forgotten by TV news in its pursuit of novelty, sensation, and compelling visuals. Whatever breaking news next captures the attention of the cameras, we can count on it receiving saturation coverage until it in its turn palls. And the world goes round.