An American was beheaded in Iraq yesterday, and the news is barely causing a ripple.

It's the subject of a below-the-fold story on the front page of The New York Times. It's not currently the subject of any of the "Top Stories" at Google News. Over on the right, the New York Post keeps it off the front page (where the top story is "MOMSTERS -- Lesbian duo beat son to death: cops"). And as I write this, none of the 25 most-blogged-about stories, as surveyed by Memeorandum, concern the beheading (12 of the 25 concern Dan Rather and the National Guard documents).

Back in May, right-wingers -- William Bennett and Jonah Goldberg, for instance, in National Review -- argued that the press was paying too little attention to Nick Berg's beheading. Funny -- I'm not hearing anything like that now. Could it be because the story that dominated the headlines back then was Abu Ghraib, which was embarrassing to Bush, and the story that tops the charts now is CBS's documents blunder -- an inadvertent gift to the Bush campaign?