More Media Cowardice

Surprise, surprise:

How much of the American media's unwillingness to show the cartoon images of Islam's prophet has been out of respect for Islam, how much an inflated sense of political correctness, and how much out of sheer cowardice?

All of the evidence points to the latter. Time and again the American media has demonstrated its zero tolerance policy toward world religions, with one notable exception. Indeed, the press seems to enjoy goading and provoking Christians as much as the early Romans did. Granted, the Western press was for a time reluctant to portray Jews negatively in recompense for its silence during the Holocaust. But today one need only substitute the word "Israeli" or "Zionist" for Jew and it is again open season.

The Western media today mocks Catholics and Protestants with the regularity of a bass note in a Bach fugue, and it does so to boost its credibility as independent and enlightened, and because it has little to fear in return. The worst one can expect are a few letters to the editor, a scolding from Pat Robertson, or a poorly attended protest march, as when an art gallery exhibits photos of a crucifix submerged in urine, a portrait of a nude Jesus with an erection, or a "blasphemous" film like Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ debuts.

No major American or European newspaper that I am aware of has ever shied away from running editorial cartoons portraying Christian fundamentalists or Intelligent Design proponents as backward bumpkins. Jesus of Nazareth pops up frequently in editorial cartoons, as do pedophile priests, and gay-bashing pastors. Religious attacks are so common that readers would question the independence of newspapers if they suddenly refused to run, say, a pope cartoon. So it was curious to see the New York Times come out this week with its absurd comment that "news organizations...usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols." The Times then ran an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer's editor Amanda Bennett in which she is quoted as saying, "There's been a whole history of newspapers publishing things that people would find controversial and offensive." The Inquirer is the only major American paper to reprint a Mohammed cartoon.

And, as if to prove the point, the New York Times runs a photo of the Virgin Mary painted in elephant crap.

At this point, is there anything at all left to say about the scumbag left wing media in this country?