I have no problem whatever with a media organization choosing not to publish the cartoons on the grounds that it is acting cautiously to ensure that its staffers don’t get their heads bashed in overseas — or because of fears that Islamic radicals here at home might choose to take a stand by taking a shot at somebody. These people are dangerous and it is meet and proper to exercise caution. A consortium of publishers in the United States joined together to put Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses into paperback in order to protect staffers at Rushdie’s publishing house from being added to the murderous fatwa against him — and only the most self-righteously pious could have objected to that act of caution, given the circumstances.

It’s the pretense in the cartoon case that I find so repulsive — the pretense that these organizations have made an editorial judgment in choosing not to publish. That’s nonsense on stilts, and what’s more, they all know it. They aren’t publishing out of a reasonable fear, not out of reasoned reflection. But they just can’t resist lying in a way to make themselves feel better about their decision.