This present insanity supposedly started with a story about an author who couldn't find an illustrator for a book about the Prophet Muhammad. But that story could have been told without soliciting images of Islam's prophet. Did Jyllands-Posten and the European papers that followed in its tracks have the right to publish the cartoons? Absolutely. Were they obliged to? Of course not.

Doing so was a matter of editorial choice, not moral or ethical imperative. They can claim they were making a statement about freedom of expression; all they really said was that they regard Islam's prohibition on imagery as ridiculous.

In fact, Islam's teachings in this regard aren't very different from those of the more Orthodox denominations of my Jewish faith. Codified in Hebrew versions of the Ten Commandments, among other places, is the prohibition on making or worshipping "graven images."

Newspapers, magazines, television programs and Web sites always have more material available to them than they choose to distribute, "choose" being the operative word. If a government controls what can and cannot be distributed, it's called censorship. If a media outlet decides for itself what to include and exclude from its products — whether for journalistic or economic reasons, out of respect for possible sensitivities of some readers or concern about possible impact on its community — it's called editorial judgment.

Here in the United States, at least two major newspapers in the last week — the Austin American-Statesman and The Philadelphia Inquirer — chose to publish one of the original Danish cartoons to illustrate stories about the controversy and violence. Other papers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, have decided that the images aren't necessary to communicate the story. It's called judgment.

In choosing to solicit and publish cartoons of Muhammad purely to defy Islamic traditions, Jyllands-Posten and the European papers that followed in its footsteps exercised their freedom. They also exercised atrocious judgment.