James Taranto:

“The unusual medium used to create a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI … has upset Roman Catholic leaders in Milwaukee,” reports Mitch Smith of the New York Times. Go figure. They’re not talking about Post-it Notes or chewing gum. Niki Johnson’s portrait of the pope emeritus is fashioned from “17,000 stretched-out condoms in a variety of colors.” It is titled “Eggs Benedict.” …

Johnson says the portrait is “not hate-based,” but rather — in Smith’s paraphrase — “a way to critique Benedict’s views while raising awareness about public health.”

Good luck with that. Archbishop and blogger Jerome Listecki criticized the Milwaukee Art Museum for accepting the piece: “Would they accept art—pick your favorite religious or historical figures—featuring them in various pornographic poses (which has happened in some international publications)?” he asks, alluding to the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo.

This column is interested in the same question, but as regards the New York Times, not the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Times has already answered Listecki’s question in the negative by pointedly refusing to print any of Charlie Hebdo’s controversial cartoons to illustrate stories about January’s Islamic supremacist massacre of Charlie staff. But Smith’s piece is accompanied by a photo of the prophylactic pope portrait.

The Washington Examiner’s T. Becket Adams and National Review’s Charles Cooke are both critical of the Times’s double standard — but both let the paper off too easy.

Times executive editor Dean Baquet told Adams in January: “Was it hard to deny our readers these images? Absolutely. But we still have standards, and they involve not running offensive material.” He added: “They don’t meet our standards. They are provocative on purpose. They show religious figures in sexual positions. We do not show those.”

It is true that some of the cartoons in question depict “sexual positions” and thus are unsuitable for reproduction in a family newspaper for reasons having nothing to do with religion. But some of them are tame. Why not show the latter? In an email to Politico’s Dylan Byers, Baquet claimed: “To really show what the fuss was about you have to show the most over the top drawings. Otherwise, people won’t really understand the story.”

That answer begs the question somewhat: Even if we accept Baquet’s premise that you can’t “really understand the story” without seeing all the cartoons, it does not follow that seeing some of them brings one no closer to understanding than seeing none of them.

Even so, most of this can be squared with the Times’s treatment of “Eggs Benedict.” It seems implausible to assert that the portrait is unsuitable for a family newspaper: There is nothing offensive about the image of Benedict, as distinct from the medium. And there’s no question the photo helps the reader understand the controversy.

But wait. In a subsequent email to Byers, Baquet added: “[We] obviously don’t expect all to agree. But let’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 ISIS but I do care about that family and it is arrogant to ignore them.”

We have it on good authority that there are also Catholic families in Brooklyn.

Now consider what Phil Corbett, the Times’s associate managing editor for standards, told Adams:

“I don’t think these situations — the Milwaukee artwork and the various Muhammad caricatures — are really equivalent. For one thing, many people might disagree, but museum officials clearly consider this Johnson piece to be a significant artwork.”

“Also, there’s no indication that the primary intent of the portrait is to offend or blaspheme (the artist and the museum both say that it is not intended to offend people but to raise a social question about the fight against AIDS). And finally, the very different reactions bears this out,” he added. “Hundreds of thousands of people protested worldwide, for instance, after the Danish cartoons were published some years ago. While some people might genuinely dislike this Milwaukee work, there doesn’t seem to be any comparable level of outrage.”

So Corbett offers three distinctions: First, that “Eggs Benedict” is “a significant artwork,” while the Charlie Hebdo cartoons are not. De gustibus non disputandum est, but Corbett rather misses the point. The significance of the cartoons lay in their news value, not their aesthetic value — and the Times does purport to be in the news business.

Second, “there’s no indication that the primary intent of the portrait is to offend or blaspheme.” Let’s note that “primary” does all the work in that sentence and that Johnson’s no-offense-intended assurance strains credulity for us. We shall nonetheless assume arguendo that Corbett is correct on this point, to which we’ll return presently.

Corbett’s third distinction concerns the difference in the “level of outrage.” Here his empirical basis seems indisputable, but it’s an odd basis for a news organization’s publication decisions. If hundreds of thousands of Catholics did protest “Eggs Benedict,” would the Times then adopt a policy of concealing it? That would be bizarre, given its greatly enhanced news value.

Which brings us to the example Adams and Cooke miss, one that disproves pretty much every one of Baquet’s and Corbett’s claims about Times standards.

On Jan. 10, three days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Times published this report by David Dunlap:

For the first half of the 20th century, an eight-foot-tall marble statue of the Prophet Muhammad overlooked Madison Square Park from the rooftop of the Appellate Division Courthouse at Madison Avenue and 25th Street.

Sixty years ago, the statue was quietly removed, in an episode that now looks, in light of recent events in Paris, like the model of tact, restraint and diplomacy.

What had spared the sensibilities of Muslim passers-by from 1902 to 1955 was that “Muhammad,” by the Mexican sculptor Charles Albert Lopez, was among nine other lawgivers, including Confucius and Moses. …

“They probably didn’t know he was there,” George T. Campbell, the chief clerk of the Appellate Division, First Department, said in 1955, when the statue was finally removed out of deference to Muslims, to whom depictions of the prophet are an affront.

(For the same reason, The New York Times has chosen not to publish photographs of the statue with this article.)

The statue of Muhammad was certainly not “provocative on purpose” (Baquet) or intended “to offend or blaspheme” (Corbett). The building’s designers would not have erected the statue unless they considered it “a significant artwork” (Corbett). Dunlap’s story was illustrated by a photo of the courthouse statuary as it looks today. How can readers “really understand the story” when the Times won’t “really show what the fuss was about” (Baquet)?

Actually, that last question is based on a false premise. As best we can tell, there was no fuss. “While some people might genuinely dislike this [statue], there doesn’t seem to be any comparable level of outrage” (Corbett).

When it comes to religiously offensive images, it seems clear the Times has at least two separate policies: With respect to Islam, nothing may be published that has the remotest possibility of giving offense. With respect to Christianity, anything goes, at least if it is consistent with the paper’s other standards.

Why? Maybe the motive is ideological (Muslims are “oppressed,” hence due more deference than “dominant” Christians), maybe practical (fear of terrorism). Our guess: a bit of the former, a lot of the latter. Either way, why conceal the policy in a web of falsehood and illogic? What’s the point of a newspaper that doesn’t tell the truth?