It is stupid and base to gratuitously insult the beliefs or symbols of religious people. That is the sort of thing that civil organizations like newspapers would do best to avoid. But once that line has been crossed, as is the case with the Danish cartoons of Mohammed fiasco, then it is even worse to cave in to terrorist's demands for censorship.
When the average person looks at what has gotten the Muslims all upset, to the point of burning embassies and threatening to behead people, I have to imagine that they see these radical Muslims as completely crazy, liable to be sent into paroxyms of rage and violence by anything or nothing.
My God, my God, a person might say, these people are damned dangerous.
Meanwhile, in newspaper land we're off into another round of revelations about how the US is being mean to detainees at Gitmo. And we've got Democrats who insist that the President listening in on the phone conversations of foreign terrorists is grounds for impeachment.
And the Democrats and their media friends wonder why they keep losing on the issue of national security.
And what must it say to the average person that newspapers are afraid to publish these cartoons? The newspaper's respect for religious beliefs has hardly kept them from being unfairly critical of or even contemptuous of other's beliefs, especially Christians.
The New York Times issued an editorial that explained why they had decided not to publish the cartoons of Mohammed out of "respect for Muslims." And then the very next day printed a reproduction of the famous painting of the Madonna with elephant sh*t all over her.
No, it's pretty obvious that the newspapers have been cowed by the terrorists. And so can we ever trust the newspapers to have the courage to report on the tough stories?
What else have they been afraid to tell us? We know, for example that CNN had an office in Baghdad for years and never reported what they knew about violations of human rights in that country for fear of what Saddam might do.