Yesterday (or earlier today, depending on your time zone), Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to five years for “culpable homicide” in the killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. That’s a term we in America might translate as manslaughter or negligent homicide.

I don’t know if that’s the right verdict or not, but I’m very glad the case is over. I get two different hours of BBC news on public radio out here, and the Beeb was almost obsessed with it. I got live audio feeds while the case was being tried. I got live feeds when the judge announced her verdict, and I got live feeds when the sentencing was announced.

I really don’t know why. I mean, sure, Pistorius is a celebrity and a sympathetic one. His physical disability and his work to overcome it and run in the Olympics as well as the Paralympics make him so. He is a handsome guy who had a beautiful girlfriend too. But it was a crime in South Africa. I could understand if the South African press went with wall-to-wall coverage (as I imagine it did), but the veddy British BBC? Staid old Auntie Beeb?

I was puzzled while it was going on and I still am.