It hasn’t been a good week for the editorial brain trust at CNN. As widespread rioting and intimidation gripped the Islamic world following the publication, in a Danish newspaper, of cartoons depicting Muhammad as an enabler of terrorism, the network decided to run only blurred-out versions of the offending images — out of respect, CNN explained, for Muslim sensibilities.
But then came yesterday’s episode of The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer’s risibly titled late afternoon round up of breaking news. During a segment on the cartoon controversy, Blitzer raised the question of whether Muslim outrage over insulting images of the Prophet might be a tad hypocritical, given that state-owned media throughout the Islamic world regularly run cartoons of greedy, hook-nosed Jews doing the devil’s work. As Blitzer spoke, the screen was filled with one image after another of — you guessed it — greedy, hook-nosed Jews doing the devil’s work… and, for a finale, a swastika embedded in a Star of David.
Not one of the images was blurred out.
Now here’s the punch line. As the video was running, two words were emblazoned at the bottom of the screen: DOUBLE STANDARD?
Yeah, guys, it is.
