Earlier this week the New York Times published a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI made completely out of condoms.
The decision to publish Niki Johnsons “artwork” called “Eggs Benedict” stands in sharp contrast to the Mohammad cartoons that ran in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo – an act of Free Speech and Free Press that two Muslim terrorists used as an excuse to storm the magazine’s Paris headquarters and kill 10 of its employees.
In making their “editorial decision” the New York Times didn’t pause to consider if the image would be offensive to Catholics or Christians at large… or that its’ publication might provoke violence because that’s not what Christians do.
Radical Muslims on the other hand promise – and deliver – lethal violence against those who “offend the prophet” by first drawing and then publishing the result in their daily pages. That’s probably why the NYT did not republish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons because they were deemed “too offensive” to print.
NYT’s act of journalistic self-censorship proves that America’s self-appointed cultural elites know they can sell newspapers by insulting Christianity and defaming its’ leaders without fear of reprisal because doing so does not violate Sharia Law.
According to Johnson, her portrait was “not hate-based”. Rather, it was meant to “critique” Pope Benedict’s views on sex and contraception while “raising awareness about public health.”
“What I want to do is really destigmatize the condom, normalize it,” she told the newspaper. “I’ve watched kids and parents talk about condoms. It opens a door to talking about what those things are and what they do.”
Forget for a moment that “watching kids and parent talk about condoms” is what kids and parents are supposed to do in the privacy of their homes, at a time of their choosing and in a way that is sensitive to the innocence of youth.
Johnson on the other hand is impatient for the conversation to begin. Johnson believes it is her job to come between parent and child… to shake things up like a bull in a china shop… force a conversation on difficult issues like abortion and contraception… and insult Catholics worldwide if necessary to do it.
The Times’ decision to run an image of “Eggs Benedict” comes just five months after the paper announced that it would not show Charlie Hebdo’s infamously provocative artwork.
The newspaper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, said in public statement at the time that the French satirical magazine’s cartoons were simply too offensive for publication.
“Was it hard to deny our readers these images? Absolutely. But we still have standards, and they involve not running offensive material,” Baquet told the Washington Examiner in January.”
“And they don’t meet our standards. They are provocative on purpose. They show religious figures in sexual positions. We do not show those.”
Without speaking to the accuracy of Baquet’s descriptions of the drawings, are we to believe that the Mohammed cartoons are provocative on purpose but that the “Egg Benedict” image of the Pope made out of condoms that they rushed into print is provocative by accident?
Does this line of reasoning justify the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices that left 10 journalists dead – a just outcome for a magazine that repeatedly mocked Islam and Muhammad on purpose?
Pounding his chest in self-righteousness, Baquet points out in a statement to Politico:
“[L]et’s not forget the Muslim family in Brooklyn who read us and is offended by any depiction of what he sees as his prophet…” “I don’t give a damn about the head of [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] but I do care about that family and it is arrogant to ignore them.”
Times’ associate managing editor for standards Phil Corbett goes further telling The Washington Examiner in defense of the newspaper’s decision to publish Johnson’s “artwork” that:
“There’s no simple, unwavering formula we can apply in’ situations like this. We really don’t want to gratuitously offend anyone’s deeply held beliefs. That said, it’s probably impossible to avoid ever offending anyone…”
“We have to make these judgments all the time. Reasonable people might disagree about any one of them,” he said.”
That said, Corbett went on – using the pages of his newspaper as a cudgel – to “gratuitously offend” 1.2 billion Catholics who don’t express their outrage by killing people with whom they disagree.
