Conservative stupidity (reprise)

In this post, Glenn Reynolds links to a blogger named Jeff Quinton, who’s spotted that his blog has seen a huge amount of extra traffic in the aftermath of the Nick Berg decapitation, and that nearly all of the hits are from people Googling for phrases like ‘nick berg decapitation’.

Mr Reynolds believes that because the hit spike has come from this, rather than ‘Abu Ghraib prison scandal’, the American public care about some random nutcases cutting a peace campaigner’s head off far more than they care about the institutionalised vileness that appears to run through the heart of their armed forces – and therefore, that the media is liberal and rubbish.

If his first assertion were correct, then it would be a very good argument in favour of the American press. If people are genuinely too stupid to understand why Mr Berg’s death is sad and evil but inconsequential, whereas the Abu Ghraib abuse is bad and evil and very consequential, then they really *need* the media to show them that the opposite is true.

However, the conclusion is way off. For a start, Mr Reynolds appears to misread Mr Quinton’s post as claiming that the phrases are *the top* Internet search phrases. Certainly the otherwise excellent Natalie Solent reads Mr Reynolds this way, and goes on to claim stuff about The World that’s almost certainly untrue.

Whether or not Mr Reynolds is mistaken, all concerned (even Andrew Sullivan, strangely enough) are suffering from a deeply overinflated sense of self-importance.

The reason their traffic (and mine) has rocketed on Nick Berg-related search terms is that there is a video of the bloke having his head cut off on the Internet – and the number of people weird enough in the head to want to watch a secret snuff movie that you can’t get anywhere else dramatically outweighs the number of people who normally read political blogs.

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