Bret Stephens visited the University of Chicago shortly after I did last year:

Last May, sex-advice columnist Dan Savage gave a talk at the University of Chicago's Institute for Politics in which he used a term so infamous that it caused members of the audience to walk out "in a state of distress." Later, a petition was put forward to demand that the institution apologize for "failing to stop" Mr. Savage from using the term, and to "assert a commitment to preventing the use of slurs and hate speech in the future."

The word in question? To adapt the old joke: I could tell you but they're going to kill me.

Well, OK, here goes. The word is "tranny," meaning a transgender or transsexual, or a transvestite person. So hideously offensive is this word nowadays that, when I arrived at an Institute of Politics event a few weeks later, a group called Queers United in Power—or QUIP, but minus the humor—held a protest outside and handed out leaflets denouncing (without spelling out) the use of the "T word." I had to ask around to find out what the word was; I got the answer in a whisper.

I'm gonna break in here for a second: I wasn't tossing the "T word" around at University of Chicago for shits and giggles. I wasn't using "tranny" gratuitously and maliciously. Ana Marie Cox asked me about the word, why I had stopped using it in my column (unlike queer, dyke, faggot, sissy, and breeder), and the history of queer activists reclaiming and subverting hate terms. (There was a good example of this history in the hit British film Pride: "Pits and Perverts.") I recounted the stupid shitstorm in this blog post. Suffice it say: I wasn't using the "T word," I was mentioning it—and that's a distinction with a difference. For the record: I do not use the "T word" anymore. Except when I'm forced to talk about why I don't use it anymore. Then I might have to mention it. Anyways...

Back to the Wall Street Journal: Stephens goes on to compare QUIP to al Qaeda:

I was reminded of this small episode following last week's massacre of journalists in France, after which it has become fashionable to "be" Charlie Hebdo. Sorry, but QUIP is not Charlie Hebdo: QUIP is al Qaeda with a different list of moral objections and a milder set of criminal penalties. Otherwise, like al Qaeda, it's the same unattractive mix of quavering personal sensitivity and totalitarian demands for idealogical conformity.

To which one can only reply: tranny, tranny, tranny, Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, de-da-da-da. Free speech—at least speech that is truly free—is always a scandal to someone or other. Chill out and deal.

So Brett Stephens bravely stands up to the powerless "totalitarians" at QUIP by throwing the "T word" around in print—which will piss off the kids at QUIP (who will mostly likely blame me for it)—and then proceeds to throw the word "Mohammad" around in print. But the menacing Islamic extremists at al Qaeda don't object to the use of the word "Mohammad" in print. They object to drawings of the prophet. So to stand up at to al Qaeda's totalitarians (no quotation marks needed)—to strike two equal blows for "speech that is truly free"—the Wall Street Journal would have to illustrate Stephens' piece with a drawing of Muhammad.

Here's the illo the Wall Street Journal went with:

That's not an image of Muhammad. That is "The Death of Socrates," an 18th Century oil painting by Jacques-Louis David. And the Wall Street Journal chose to illustrate Stephens' piece with that particular image—an oil painting of Socrates (who comes in for one mention in Stephens' piece)—over, say, the much more relevant cover of the first post-massacre edition of Charlie Hebdo (which comes in for eight mentions in Stephens' piece):

So, yeah, QUIP is definitely not Charlie Hebdo, Mr. Stephens, I agree with you there. (QUIP also isn't al Qaeda.) But you know who else isn't Charlie Hebdo? You, your editors, and the owner of your paper.