Is the Grey Lady subtly issuing a mea culpa?

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - There is a fascinating editorial in Saturday's New York Times entitled “Silenced by Islamist Rage,” tackling the reaction to the Muhammad cartoons that have become one of the defining national stories of late. Interestingly, the Grey Lady – which has pathetically refused to share those images at the heart of this matter – has finally seen fit to draw a strange compromise of sorts, editorializing:

With every new riot over the Danish cartoons, it becomes clearer that the protests are no longer about the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, but about the demagoguery of Islamic extremists.

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The voices of moderation in the Muslim world are the ones that are being intimidated and silenced. Those few journalists and leaders who have spoken out against the rioting have been vilified and assailed, and even jailed.

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It is time for moderate Muslims to abandon the illusion that they can placate the Islamists by straddling the fence.

Kudos to the Times for realizing the complexity of the situation and taking a proper stance for once. It is too little by my approximation – the cartoons should have been printed – but not too late, and the paper does deserve credit for such.

The ed page piece comes on the heels of a Thursday column in The Washington Post by William Bennett and Alan Dershowitz (a very strange coupling of bedfellows) condemning the media for not showing the cartoons in question. Their column notes:

Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts.

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But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London -- never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles -- included signs that read, "Behead those who insult Islam." The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.

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When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press -- an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms -- would be among the first to surrender.

When Messrs. Bennett and Dershowitz are tag-teaming an editorial for The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer is printing the controversial cartoons and college newspapers, establishments long known for their idealism, are starting to offer forth the material as well, you have to wonder if Bill Keller may be catching on to what a prude coward he truly has been.

After all, the New York Times continues to exclude one major piece of news that is fit to print.