The video of Nick Berg being decapitated, and the reaction to it among some right-wing bloggers, is forcing me to ratchet down my already low appraisal of the intellectual and moral level of these folks. Right-wing bloggers (for example) have taken it upon themselves to make the video available; and, in the process, they are lambasting the mainstream media for not showing a video of a young man having his head cut off with a large knife. So, e.g., the aforementioned neanderthal intones:
"The blogosphere has the courage and integrity to show this video (or images from it) while Big Media cries 'Offensive!' as they continue to show pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners piled on top of one another."
What do you say to someone who can't see a difference between a real, graphic decapitation of a human being and naked men in a pile?
What's even weirder is that, in the twisted fantasyland of right-wing bloggers, the failure of the mainstream media to show footage of a young man being decapitated is just more evidence of liberal bias in the media--to be contrasted with the honesty and courage, of course, of right-wing bloggers.
How is it that these individuals don't notice that:
(1) A young man having his head severed by a large knife is a disgusting and frightful spectacle of a kind that is never shown in the mainstream media, regardless of the perpetrator. When a news anchor in Pennsylvania blew his brains out on the air, the national media did not show it. If someone defecates in public, the media do not air footage of it. If a camera captures an accident in which someone is decapitated, the media do not air it. Here's a simple and brute fact about human sensibilities: witnessing a human head being severed is much more disturbing (nauseating, nightmare-inducing, etc.) than seeing a pile of naked men.
(2) When the young man's identity is known, as is the case here, it causes hurt and pain to his family to know that their child's gruesome murder is available for anyone to view. As noted in today's paper, the picture of Nicholas Berg's "father, Michael, crying in the arms of another son, David" shows the father's reaction "after learning that the brutal act was there for anyone to see on the Internet."
(3) The crimes of Abu Ghraib were perpetrated by our government, not someone else's. In a democratic society, where the government is putatively responsible to the citizenry, public attention should be focused on these misdeeds and what our government is doing about them. Last time I looked, the people who killed Nicholas Berg weren't asking for dollars and votes from American citizens.
So, seriously, how stupid, how morally tone-deaf, how devoid of human sensibility are these right-wing bloggers?
UPDATE: You can't make stuff like this up: this from a blogger whose motto is "Bush is a giant amongst us little men":
"I wanna kill these Arab animals. I wanna vomit. I have just seen the beheading of Nick Berg. A fellow American who went to Iraq to help the good people of Iraq. More than ever I am convinced we must root out, kill, destroy, exterminate these terrorists and their ideology of murder."
And he concludes--how else?--"MAY GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES. MAY GOD BLESS NICK BERG."
He forgot to add: may God bless genocide for the "Arab animals," too.
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