“If you’re thinking of getting steamed over [the Woolwich beheading], don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against ‘mass hysteria’ over ‘mundane acts of violence.’

“That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly ‘mundane’ in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London — at least as unusual as, say, blowing up eight-year-old boys at the Boston Marathon. It was ‘mundane’ only in the sense that, as at weddings and kindergarten concerts, the reflexive reaction of everybody present was to get out their cell phones and start filming.”

– Mark Steyn