A + B Equals Whatever My Opinion Is
There are a few things that can, it seems, turn smart to stupid in an instant. Some of these include:
- Crack Cocaine.
- The Desire to Get Laid.
- Partisan Politics
The last item on the list seems to be especially potent. Every event somehow gets manipulated to support the pre-determined opinions of people on one side of the aisle or the other.
I’ve discussed the blinding nature of partisanship before, first in The Hate and later in The Politicization of Pat Tillman.
Let’s examine it again in the coverage of Nick Berg and its relationship to the coverage of Abu Graib. There are plenty of ordinarily smart people who are arguing that the fact the Abu Graib story is getting more ink is a result of a liberal press, against the war, against Bush, and somehow, by extension (and this is always the subtext), with the terrorists.
According to the argument (you can see several examples gathered over at Instapundit’s site), the press has determined that Abu Graib is the important news item even though a large majority of public news seekers believe that Berg is the much bigger story. How does the partisan-thinker come to this conclusion? Simple. Look at the traffic to news sites in the hours following the breaking of the Berg story. And then look at phrases most searched for at the top search engines – which include Nick Berg video, Nick Berg, Berg beheading, etc.
Of course, according to this logic, the liberal press should also be chastised for failing to give enough coverage to Paris Hilton’s sex tape, Britney’s ass, Beyonce’s midriff and the major news that Pam Anderson just became an American citizen (Koppel and the New York Times both ignored that one, the Socialist bastards).
Come on. We know why there was a surge in traffic when the Berg story broke. We understand full well the sick curiosity that brought people by the millions to search and news sites in the hours after the brutal offense was first reported. Anyone who removes the partisan blinders can plainly see that the search for a glimpse of the Nick Berg video is anything but an affirmation that this story deserves more coverage than it’s getting or that it is somehow more important than the Abu Graib story.
A fanatical, violent, brutal, murderous, terror leader beheading an innocent person in Iraq is upsetting and horrible. I have a rage-induced knot in my stomach as I’m writing this. But it’s hardly a man bites dog story. Americans abusing prisoners, many of whom would later be seen as innocent of any charge, is.
So what exactly kind of “more coverage of the Berg story” would make them happy? That his family blames the Administration? That it’s a perfect example of the downward-spiral of violence that the jihadists want to provoke? That it’s too bad Bush decided the pre-war runup was an inconvenient time to take out al-Zarqawi?
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I don’t care how much coverage each gets in the mainstream press; the mainstream press becomes more irrelevant by the second with the internet at everyone’s fingertips.
All I ask is that no one makes anymore references to the Nick Berg and Abu Ghraib events as being even remotely similar. I’ve actually heard people saying that the Americans at Abu Ghraib are just as bad as Nick Berg’s murderers. You’ve gotta be seriously uneducated or at least pretty drunk to reach this conclusion.
The Abu Ghraib images depict scenes of humiliation. The Nick Berg images depict a decapitation. The captors of the former are being court-martialed. The captors of the latter will be rewarded. So let’s put these really lame auto-anti-war reactions and unreasonable comparisons to rest.
Drew
That seems to miss the entire point of the argument being made here. You’re basically making the point that we are not nearly as bad as Al Qaeda. That’s a sad goal.
Of course the beheading is worse on the evil-scale. No sound argument can be made against this point. But what should we be more upset about. Bad guys being really, really bad. Or good guys being pretty damn bad?
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First off, no, I did not miss the point. I immediately addressed the issue (over/undercoverage of the Nick Berg story), then made my own (new) point about everyone out there making stupid comparisons.
Your claim is that Nick Berg’s decapitation is more evil but less upsetting? That is a downright amazing take you’ve got there.
In any case, a lot of words like “murder” and “rape” have been floating around the Abu Ghraib situation with very little substance to back them up. We’ve seen a lot (a LOT) of (yes, too many) naked dogpiles and someone pointing and laughing at a couple Iraqi wieners. No decapitations yet, but everyone in the anti-war crowd has their fingers crossed (like a pro-war zealot waiting for WMD’s).
People blindly against the war assume Abu Ghraib prison personnel and the military, in general, are malicious and begin fantasizing about war crimes trials with Bush in the defendant’s chair. People blindly for the war, on the other hand, are saying the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to non-uniformed detainees and, compared to what the U.S. is “legally” allowed to do to these guys to obtain information, these prisoners have been treated quite gently. The truth is very few people including myself have read the Geneva Accords or know what is really “allowed” even if these prisoners do qualify as POW’s.
Is it okay, by Geneva standards, to force someone to masturbate? Did the world’s leaders ever decide whether it is okay or not to hand someone a couple dead wires, stand them up on a box, demand information and tell them they’re toast if they step off the box? I have no idea. Is it mean? Sure. Is it worth it if the person might have information regarding the whereabouts of the Jack of Diamonds? Maybe. The Nine of Diamonds? Maybe not.
Some may say Geneva is irrelevant and what is in those photos is just wrong. Fine, but it’s funny you’re just now breaking the deafening silence regarding prisoner abuse when, for decades, U.S. prisons have routinely tolerated worse than what we’ve seen so far out of Abu Ghraib. Yeah, I know, “Worse?” Yes, rape, for one, is worse than anything in any of the pictures I’ve seen.
Adding to the confusion, it looks like the verdict is still out on the authenticity of the Nick Berg tape. Was an artificial soundtrack dubbed over the original? Was Nick dead before the decapitation? Is it even him?
Obviously our discussion so far has assumed that none of these images (of Nick or Iraqis) are doctored, but, if confirmed, Nick Berg’s execution was both more evil and more upsetting in my book. It’s not even close. It would be ridiculous to mention them both in the same sentence had they not reached the media with similar timing.
That’s all. I’ve never used a weblog, so I don’t know how to do links or anything.