Apparently, yes.

Fox News Network's favorite alternative proper noun spelling Megyn Kelly was on today, discussing a train derailment in Columbus, Ohio, when the broadcast rolled a clip of citizen journalism video, with the video's cameraman delivering a fairly astute observation of the massive explosion he'd just witnessed.

And yet, Kelly felt the need to apologize for it, and on a subsequent viewing, the 'bad words' were censored:

News Corp's other notoriously conservative news outfits don't seem to shy away from it. Question: Does this say more about Ms. Kelly, the network's viewership, or who someone with Fox News' censor button answers to?

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

News Corp. owns HarperCollins, whose Christian division, Zondervan, has published some 30 million copies of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life and is the country's biggest publisher of bibles -- including the New International Version of the Bible, which has sold 300 million copies.

Will Braun, a contributor to Geez magazine ("holy mischief in an age of fast faith") asks:

For those us of who care about the Christian scriptures, what are we to make of this mix of billionaire media tycoonery, allegations of phone hacking and bribery, and the Holy Word of God? What are we to make of the fact that every time we buy a Zondervan product we contribute to Murdoch’s mogul-dom, which includes a personal fortune that Forbes pegged at $6.3 billion last year.

This conflict has caused him some anguish:

We do not need to accept this arrangement. Christianity does not need to be about the best and biggest deal, and we can trust that the Good News does not require the help of an unscrupulous empire. Part of me would love to see some readers, writers and retailers engage in some respectful, humble, Gandhian non-participation with respect to the big Bible business. But it seems unbecoming to advocate a boycott of a company that publishes the books of a respected friend. It seems unbecoming to boycott the Bible in any way at all. Alas, I too feel conflicted.

The debate has gone all the way to USA Today.

"Mr. Smith rushed back to The Times’s bureau in Washington to repeat the story to Robert H. Phelps, an editor there, who took notes and tape-recorded the conversation, according to both men. But then Mr. Smith had to hand off the story — he had quit The Times and was leaving town the next day to attend Yale Law School."—Richard Pérez-Peña, 2 Ex-Timesmen Say They Had a Tip on Watergate First, The New York Times, May 24, 2009.

Birth of Jesus Christ, circa 6 BC

Why The Times missed the story: Paper not founded until September 18, 1851.

Attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Why The Times missed the story: Hawaii bureau chief was out walking his dog.

Beginning of the Twentieth Century, January 1, 1901

Why The Times missed the story: Assigning editor deemed so-called new Century "unimportant" and "faddish."

Amelia Earhart disappears while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, July 2, 1937

Why The Times missed the story: Aviation reporter, hung over from bi-wing plane junket the previous night, told his editor, "We'll write about it when the lass lands."

Woodstock Music and Art Fair, August 12-15, 1969

Why The Times missed the story: Internal Times consensus was "peaceniks rolling around in mud" is not newsworthy.

Iraq WMD's, 2002-2004

Why The Times missed the story: What? They had the story.

Birth of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt in Namibia, May 27, 2006

Why The Times missed the story: Busy covering 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia that killed 6,000 people; also, exclusive pictures of Shiloh too expensive for Times photo department.

- Max Abelson

Mr. Giuliani, long viewed with suspicion by the religious right because of his pro-choice, pro-civil-union positions, went so far as to campaign for former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed back in May. The move was widely seen as an attempt to curry favor with a voting bloc that will play a crucial role in electing the Republican Presidential candidate in 2008.

But last month, Heather Mac Donald—a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the organization that served as a semi-official brain trust to Mr. Giuliani during his time in Gracie Mansion—mounted a brazen frontal assault on the politics of piety. Moreover, she chose Pat Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, as the unlikely platform from which to do so.

Ms. Mac Donald is a heroine to many in the conservative movement, in part because of her robust attacks on everything from feminist ideology (“lunacy”) to The New York Times (“a national security threat”).

She is also, not incidentally, a self-described nonbeliever.

“Skeptical conservatives—one of the Right’s less celebrated subcultures—are conservatives because of their skepticism, not in spite of it,” she wrote in the Aug. 28 issue of The American Conservative. “They ground their ideas in rational thinking and (nonreligious) moral argument. And the conservative movement is crippling itself by leaning too heavily on religion to the exclusion of these temperamentally compatible allies.”

The article ignited a firestorm that continues to sweep across conservative opinion journals and Web sites. Pundits including John Podhoretz, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg have, to varying extents, made their disagreement plain. Philosophy professor (and Opus Dei member) Michael Pakaluk has complained that Ms. Mac Donald’s “mockery of common religious sensibilities … is so unfeeling as to border on the inhuman.”

Asked about the timing of her article, Ms. Mac Donald suggested that her exasperation with the religiosity of present-day conservatism had simply reached a boiling point.

“I’ve just been impatient over the last six years,” she told The Observer. “I don’t remember anything like this current assumption that candidates should talk about their relationship with God. What is that supposed to tell citizens?”

There is no suggestion that the Manhattan Institute fellow is doing Mr. Giuliani’s bidding in making the controversial case for secular conservatism. On the contrary, Ms. Mac Donald’s argument is more likely to be met with consternation by allies of the former Mayor, for fear that it could dynamite the bridges to the religious right that they have been so assiduously trying to build.

Baruch College political-science professor Gerald De Maio, who teaches a course on religion and politics, believes that the debates about a Giuliani candidacy—and about the issues raised by Ms. Mac Donald’s article—are manifestations of the longstanding divide in the G.O.P. between social conservatives and libertarians.

The libertarian wing, he said, “is muted. They count for much less than they used to. In many ways, Gerald Ford was the last President to represent that tendency. Now, one of the questions is: Could Rudy Giuliani get the nomination as a social liberal? I can’t see how social conservatives in the heartland can back him.”

Ms. Mac Donald admiringly told The Observer that the former Mayor “never invoked God, but transformed this city in ways that couldn’t have been imagined.” But she insisted that her main concern wasn’t electoral politics. She was, she said, more interested in the need for “a sound philosophical basis for conservative argument.”

That may sound like a nebulous aim. But it is also an honorable one.

When the President names Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, uses a sly phrase like “wonder-working power” during a manifestly political occasion like a State of the Union address or invokes God in support of his decisions in Iraq, he seeks, at the minimum, to give his agenda a religious veneer.

The invocation of religion in support of political beliefs is, above all else, a dangerously effective tool for foreclosing debate, discouraging scrutiny and suggesting that one’s opponents lack moral fiber.

The battle of ideas should be fought with the weapons of reason and logic alone.

That is not an intrinsically liberal idea. There is much to support in Ms. Mac Donald’s contention that conservatism is strong enough to prosper without being propped up by the language of religious piety.

But as Mr. Giuliani already seems to have demonstrated by his actions, many conservatives will never see things that way.

Very Italian!

So Italian that he's going all the way to Buffalo to get in the shot with Italian Prime Minister Silvio "Jesus Christ" Berlusconi. (Think Bloomberg, only dogged by serious allegations of corruption. Maybe they'll talk about, um, reform?)

And how Catholic? He's so Catholic that he's listing his Mass attendance on his public schedule, along with the address of St. Stanislaus in Buffalo. The schedule, of course, warns (twice) that the religious observance is closed to the press, as Suozzi obviously would never mix his faith with politics. (Can you really close a Mass? Don't reporters have souls too? Don't answer that!)

He must have noticed something that New York City types, like me, tend to forget: there are stil a whole lot of white Catholic Democrats.

CORRECTION: The Berlusconi event is in New York. He's coming all the way back from Buffalo for it!

A couple of years ago, a renowned art critic by the name of Rudolph Giuliani condemned as anti-Catholic an exhibit scheduled for the Brooklyn Museum. You'll recall that the piece in question was a representation of the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung and pictures some might regard as obscene. Oh, there were great howls of protest from the arts

and cultural communities. Why, they said, the Mayor hadn't even seen the piece! How dare he pass judgment on art he hadn't seen! The forces of light were in high dudgeon over this fascistic assault by the small-minded, parochial Mayor of New York.

More than a year after the controversy, somebody handed me an old piece from The Nation in which a writer whose name escapes me condemned the Mayor and anybody who either agreed with him or simply seemed a little, you know, put off by the elephant-dung thing (like yours truly). These awful philistines, the writer said, had no right to utter an opinion as they had not seen the piece. The writer, like so many of her ilk, prefers to wallow in her own prejudices rather than make inquires that might lead to a facsimile of truth. A phone call or two might have challenged the assumption.

So, for condemning a piece of art he hadn't seen, Rudolph Giuliani was accused of myriad crimes against art by those who see themselves as the stalwart advocates of free expression and unfettered artistry.

It would be wonderful, and heartening, to see these brave souls rallying to Mr. Gibson's side, condemning his critics with righteous anger and smug self-assurance. It would be thrilling to hear their voices raised on cable television, to read their thoughts on op-ed pages throughout the nation. It would be wonderful to see them dismiss Mr. Gibson's critics with the same contempt they displayed for Mr. Giuliani. Of course, this would involve defending, rather than attacking, a very conservative Catholic with some rather curious opinions. As this course of action would be decidedly unfashionable, Mr. Gibson is left to defend himself against critics who haven't seen his movie.

I haven't seen the movie either, so if you're looking for a condemnation or a defense of Mr. Gibson, look elsewhere. I'm astonished, however, at the intellectual dishonesty of his critics and the utter lack of support he has received from those who were so offended by Mr. Giuliani's venture into art criticism. Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn said that the movie shouldn't be distributed and that it would be "unhealthy for Jews all over the world." This criticism was based on secondhand accounts of what the unseen film may or may not contain about the role Jews may or may not have played in the crucifixion of another Jew, i.e., Christ.

"The Gospels show that Jesus was killed by a combination of social and political forces," said former Council member Charles Millard, who holds a degree in theology from Holy Cross College. "The Gospels interpret the movement of those forces. They are not about the vilification of a people. If they were, then the Gospels would be anti-Italian." The Romans, after all, killed Christ, as Catholics are reminded every Sunday when they invoke the name of Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judea, as Christ's executioner.

As for the contention that the film will inflame anti-Semitic mobs around the world, well, it's refreshing to see Hollywood's allies and apologists in the media arguing that moviemakers should be held accountable for their products. When people like William Bennett, George Will and Bob Dole contended that the entertainment industry bore some responsibility for the images and messages contained in movies and music, they were roundly condemned as censorious prudes who simply didn't understand that when a male rapper refers to women as "hos" and worse, he simply is reflecting inner-city realities and by no means should be held responsible for, say, young men who treat young women like whores.

Art surely can provoke as well as inspire, and so perhaps the critics are right to worry that ignorant Christians will use The Passion as a pretext for anti-Semitic outrages.

But surely this new accountability shouldn't apply only to Mel Gibson.

So far, this is business as usual. But the ad of June 15 brings up a disturbing issue. Why, it asks, is it all right to make fun of Catholic belief, why do so many liberals think that offensive images of Jesus Christ are examples of free speech but anti-Semitic or anti-feminist or anti-gay material ought to be repressed? Do we indeed have a double standard? The Catholic League is calling for an end to hate speech, and it claims that "legal rights are not necessarily moral rights." Since this seems fair enough, we need to talk about it.

Does my ulcer burn more brightly when Jews are ridiculed than when Catholics receive the same treatment? Am I in fact a hypocrite, or is something else going on here? First, those of us who believe in the right to attack the religious imagery of your choice do not believe that anti-Semitism or anti-black or anti-female material should be legally removed from our vision. The people who wish to attend such media events, to read such drivel, are more than entitled to their free and unobstructed experience. The state, the law, the government, has no business blocking even the most odious of views. That is the first and basic premise of freedom as we so blissfully praise it in the United States. The wrestling mat that is our culture allows all kinds to hit the floor, and if the anti-blacks want to show up at the Apollo Theater in Ku Klux Klan robes, I would expect our Finest to protect them, not out of agreement but out of commitment to even our most difficult social exchanges.

Let me make this harder for myself. If someone writes a play, maybe even an artistic triumph of a play that takes as its theme Holocaust denial, would I still cling to the playwright's right to be heard? What if he or she tried to perform Elie Wiesel's Night as a male stripper vaudeville act? I might stand outside the theater and picket. I might write a few chosen words to the drama critic, begging him or her not to review it. I might write another play exposing the first for what it is, dung thrown at our brains. I might put an ad in the paper telling the audience that the play is lying, the truth will not be denied. I would be upset and hurt, just as members of the Catholic League are now. But I wouldn't accuse the Catholic League of double standards, because we are all allowed to object and to object to the objections. Today's hysterical politically correct atmosphere does deputize us all as culture cops, but the shiny badge only grants the right to sound off, a right we already have, anyway.

That is why I don't give myself gray hairs over the evils of pornography or the Southern Baptists' wistful call for female subservience. Everyone's entitled to a grief disguised as an opinion, and with it all in each decade we seem to get a little less small-minded than we were before. The haters among us simply try ever more anxiously to divert our attention from the fact that they are standing on a margin that grows ever and ever thinner.

There is another important matter here. The Catholic League in its reference to Shylock and Sambo is granting itself rather gratuitously, and with slippery skill, a victim status equal to all other victims of persecution and hate. The league wants to claim that Catholics, too, are maligned and unjustly ridiculed by popular forces in America. True, there was a time when to be Catholic in this country was not a door to high society or elected office. But those times are long gone.

The suffering of Catholics in America pales to a fine ghost when compared to the suffering of the black slave and to the long history of Jewish pogrom and exile caused quite frequently by those who thought Jews responsible for their God's death, or just simply unworthy of life itself. In America, the Native Americans, the poor Hispanics, the migrants and the immigrants, the gays hidden and open, have long suffered the slings and arrows of a vicious, cruel world. The Catholics might wish to see themselves as Christlike-impaled on the cross of an all too liberal American society-but that would be pure fantasy.

The object of the humor in the McNally play is not the powerless among us who are vulnerable to mob attack and have historically been murdered and persecuted, but rather the majority, the followers of Christ, whether they belong to the Catholic Church or to some other breakaway branch. It seems a strange irony that the Church of the Inquisition, the Church that protected Nazi officials and sped them on their way out of Europe, the Church that failed to denounce the murder of the Jews as well as the imprisonment of homosexuals, the Church that still denies its pulpit to women, should now be claiming equal victim status. Especially odd that it should be doing this while it is actively attempting to deny homosexuals their full human dignity. Unlike the so-called "Christian bashing" by Mr. McNally, when some Christians go into the streets to bash, real blood tends to flow.

It is the nature of humor, essays, plays, novels and cartoons to go after the powerful, not the powerless.

Of course, legal rights are not necessarily moral; i.e., Jim Crow. But the problem in a diverse society is that we don't all agree on what is moral. This is the rub. I think it's immoral to think gays are immoral.

I would not stop the Catholic League from advertising its views even if a stomach spasm arrives along with my breakfast coffee. But we should call this "victim me-tooism" for the fraud it is. You can flash pictures of fetuses all you like, but don't complain if you become the butt of a public joke. Groups that have agitated to keep gays from enjoying equal rights in the community are hardly victims of anything but their own bile. The Jewish joke and the Terrence McNally play are kissing cousins, samizdat for people the authorities hound. Royalty's minions are forever trying to tear out the tongue of the child who pointed out that the Emperor was naked as a newborn babe.