A little bit of knowledge is an intriguing thing:
“The No. 1 search term at Google Trends Wednesday morning was ‘Ted Kennedy.’ Nos. 2 and 3: ‘Mary Jo Kopechne’ and ‘Chappaquiddick,’” wrote Politico’s Michael Calderone, noting that not everyone was observing the Massachusetts Democrat’s death in the hagiographic style of the mainstream press.
Consensus or conspiracy? The liberal watchdogs were vigilant, and Carly Carioli of the Boston Phoenix pounced, decrying evidence of “a right-wing smear campaign…an orchestrated movement” on the part of “ghoulishly insensitive right-wingers.”
Carioli was writing about Twitter, but she was again writing about search terms. My theory: It’s the hagiography itself that led Internet users to search for “Chappaquiddick” and “Mary Jo Kopechne.” MSM accounts had to balance their slavish devotion to Fatboy with the tattered remnants of their journalistic integrity. They had to say something to readers about Chappaquiddick and Kopechne, if only to explain how such a wonderful man was never elected president, but the MSM kept it brief. Too brief. Young readers unfamiliar with the incident—the MSM has hardly pounded away on it these forty years—were left no choice but to search online for more details.
Let me speak for the rest of the “ghoulishly insensitive right-wingers,” Ms. Carioli, in saying that we didn’t have to search for information about Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne, we already knew it.
