Jonah: The aftermath of Falwell v. Flynt is even better than you describe. From Larry Flynt’s “My Friend, Jerry Falwell,” published in the Los Angeles Times five days after the reverend’s death:

I was in my office in Beverly Hills, and out of nowhere my secretary buzzes me, saying, “Jerry Falwell is here to see you.” I was shocked, but I said, “Send him in.” We talked for two hours, with the latest issues of Hustler neatly stacked on my desk in front of him. He suggested that we go around the country debating, and I agreed. We went to colleges, debating moral issues and 1st Amendment issues — what’s “proper,” what’s not and why.
In the years that followed and up until his death, he’d come to see me every time he was in California. We’d have interesting philosophical conversations. We’d exchange personal Christmas cards. He’d show me pictures of his grandchildren. I was with him in Florida once when he complained about his health and his weight, so I suggested that he go on a diet that had worked for me. I faxed a copy to his wife when I got back home. . . .
I’ll never admire him for his views or his opinions. To this day, I’m not sure if his television embrace [of Flynt, in 1997] was meant to mend fences, to show himself to the public as a generous and forgiving preacher or merely to make me uneasy, but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.

Say what you like about Jerry Falwell in other regards. Contra these MSNBC muttonheads, Falwell’s​ was, in this instance, an example to emulate. How much more it says, then, that we would be thrilled if Islamic extremists, when offended, simply did nothing – let alone forgave and forgot.