The New York Times weighs in today on The Mo-toons Return Story: namely, picking up on what has happened since 17 Danish newspapers recently reprinted the Danish Mohammed cartoons in the wake of an Islamic  plot, thwarted by Danish police, to murder cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

Two things.

One, the reporter's slant on Muslim hysteria:

Americans, for whom the presidential election seems to have become a delirious, unending sport, preoccupying their attention, turn out not to be the only ones who preferred to forget about the cartoons. So had many Danes and fellow Europeans. They were shocked by the arrests.

In the days shortly after, 17 Danish newspapers, having declined to publish the offending cartoons two years ago, declared solidarity with Mr. Westergaard and printed them. This, naturally, provoked a fresh round of protests from Gaza to Indonesia.

Naturally? Is it my imagination, or does this construction implicitly implicate the Danish newspapers for causing the protests?

Then there was this illuminating shaft of clarity from the Danish foreign minister in his assessment of the completely unacceptable reaction to the cartoons--these are cartoons, folks!!!--on the part of our wonderful ward and ally Afghanistan:

Meanwhile demands in Afghanistan for the instant withdrawal of Danish troops under NATO’s command and the severing of all diplomatic ties with Denmark caused Denmark’s foreign minister, Per Stig Moeller, to reply that it was becoming difficult for him “to put Danish soldiers’ lives in danger” to support a country “where one is at risk to be condemned to death for values that we believe to be an inseparable part of democracy and the modern world.”

The light dawneth????