The BBC is at least a thousand times more evil and dangerous than Rupert Murdoch

Britain has gone completely mad over the Rupert Murdoch/News of the World hacking affair and the contagion is spreading to America fast.

I knew things were bad when I spoke yesterday to a normally reliably conservative US talk radio show. "But they say they may even have hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims," said the appalled female co-host, as if this were the ne plus ultra of round, unvarnished evil.

Some perspective, please. I too respect and am moved by the plight of the 9/11 dead and their families. And of the murdered English schoolgirl Milly Dowler and of the servicemen who died in the Iraq war. (They too, apparently, may – and let's stress that word "may" – have been targets of phone hacking by the now-disbanded Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper the News of the World).

But then, so do you. So does everybody. No one in the world right now is sitting there rubbing his or her hands in glee and going: "Heh heh. 9/11 victims. Murdered schoolgirls. Dead Iraq servicemen. I'm so glad their mobile phones were hacked into by the News of the World."

Yet you'd never guess this from…

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