I’m not a big fan of Michelle Malkin. I read her regularly, as I do Kos, so I can keep an eye on what the unhinged right and the unhinged left are saying.

Today, however, she’s on the money with reaction to the South Park controversy. She echoes a point I made a couple of months ago about the media’s “selective standards of religious sensitivity”.

The media has no problem showing images that are offensive to Catholics and Christians. That’s because there is little likelihood that an angry mob of Christians will burn or blow up their overseas operations and/or kill their employees. That’s not true of Islamic – Islam: The Peaceful Religion^TM – zealots.

It’s a business decision, to be sure. Comedy Central is a wholly owned division of MTV Networks, which is a wholly owned division of Viacom. Viacom has a lot of corporate interests overseas that would be subject to vandalism and destruction if the peaceful Muslims were to overreact again.

It’s unfortunate that, as Malkin reports, Comedy Central’s principled stand on freedom of expression doesn’t extend to items likely to incite an Islamic riot, but that’s probably to be expected. If you want to blame someone, don’t blame Comedy Central or Viacom. Blame the practitioners of a religion so peaceful that a cartoon caused its followers to kill many innocent bystanders.