I'm working my way, rather quickly, through Bernard Goldberg's "Crazies to the left of me, Wimps to the righ," and came across a section on the New York Times and its refusal to print the infamous Muhammed cartoons. Goldberg describes an editorial that ran in the Times explaining how they chose not to print the cartoons because they could be accurately described using words and that they would just offend religious believers.

The next day the Times ran a picture of a piece of "art" of the Virgin Mary surrounded by pornographic images and elephant dung.

It's enough to make your head spin.

All of which reminded me of a comment made by Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard editor and Times columnist, on either Hugh Hewitt's or Dennis Prager's radio show last week. Kristol said that the Times had never reported the actual words of Sen. Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that caused all of the controversy over the past couple of months on its news pages. Kristol said that if you didn't read his column or Maureen Dowd's, you'd never have learned from the Times what Wright said.

The story broke with this ABC News report on March 13.

The first New York Times story on the controversy ran two days later, on March 15 and, contrary to Kristol's claims, did give readers a taste of Wright's words.

Earlier in the week, several television stations played clips in which Mr. Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, referred to the United States as the “U.S. of K.K.K. A.” and said the Sept. 11 attacks were a result of corrupt American foreign policy.

However, the story doesn't quote Wright's famous "God Damn America!" line or his characterization of 9/11 as our "chickens coming home to roost" nor his claims that HIV/AIDS was invented by the U.S. government in an effort to kill black people.

So, Kristol's blanket statement was wrong, but if you missed that first article, the remainder of the Times' coverage would give you plenty of reason to believe that Kristol is onto something.

Two days later, the Times publishes this piece on how Wright's successor, Rev. Otis Moss III, is defending him. In this article, Wright's statements are characterized simply "as anti-white and anti-American."

That same day, March 17, Kristol's column provides the most extensive reporting to date in the Times of what Wright said.

The next day comes another report, this one previewing the speech Obama has announced he plans to give on the issue of race. Once again, we get only general characterizations of Wright's words, not the words themselves.

Faced with what his advisers acknowledged was a major test to his candidacy, Senator Barack Obama sought on Monday to contain the damage from incendiary comments made by his pastor and prepared to address the issue of race more directly than at any other moment of his presidential campaign.

Though he has faced questions about controversial statements by the pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., for more than a year, Mr. Obama is enduring intense new scrutiny now over Mr. Wright’s characterizations of the United States as fundamentally racist and the government as corrupt and murderous. [emphasis added]

The article even closes with a bit of irony that would be lost on anyone depending solely on the Times news coverage of the Wright issue.

If his earlier appearances in the day were any guide, he is making a few subtle alterations to his routine on the campaign trail.

In his many months of stumping, Mr. Obama has rarely bid farewell to an audience the way he did at a morning event in Monaca, Pa. “God bless you and God bless America!” he proclaimed.

Of course, excepting Kristol's column, Times readers never knew that Wright had repeatedly said "God Damn America!" from the pulpit.

The day after Obama's big speech, March 19, the TImes published three stories (1, 2, 3), one editorial and one column on the Obama speech.

In these five articles, Wrights comments were characterized as:

• "anti-American, anti-white and pro-Farrakhan sentiments"
• "incendiary remarks" and "inflammatory statements"
• "incendiary race rhetoric," and "divisive"
• "controversial remarks" and "Mr. Wright's radicalism or bitterness"

It was almost enough to make someone wonder what the heck all the hubbub was about.

On speech-plus-two days, the Times followed-up on the reaction to the speech and characterized Wright's anti-white and anti-American screeds simply as "remarks."

On March 20, the Times once again simply refers to Wright's "incendiary words" in one news article. In a "Political Memo" column/analysis Wright's name is mentioned in connection with how his relationship with Obama might affect the race, but not one word is written about why this is an issue.

March 21 paper: another article that refers to Wright, but not one hint about what he actually said.

March 22 paper: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson endorses Obama and refers to Wright's "racially incendiary remarks."

March 23, Easter Sunday paper: Wright's YouTube rants are described simply as "explosive excerpts." You also get your first summary of some more of Wright's comments -- but not the comments themselves:

Television programs showed recorded parts of sermons by Mr. Wright, who is nationally known for his work in creating economic development programs in the inner city, inspiring many other black pastors to do the same, and for his fiery, prophetic preaching style. In the excerpts, Mr. Wright thunders that the government has inflicted AIDS on black people, and that the United States deserved the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

Ten days after the controversy erupted the Times finally reports on the AIDS conspiracy theory, but softens it by failing to use Wright's own words.

Also March 23, we get what, by now is the cut-and-paste description for Wright's words at the Times: "inflammatory anti-white and anti-American rhetoric."

A Maureen Dowd column on that same day finally tips off Times readers who refuse to read Kristol's column, to Wright's greatest hits.

But Republicans are salivating over Reverend Wright’s “God damn America” imprecation and his post-9/11 “America’s chickens coming home to roost” crack, combined with Michelle Obama’s aggrieved line about belatedly feeling really proud of her country.

Yet another March 23 article refers to Wright's words simply as "inflammatory statements."

A Frank Rich column managed to talk about Obama's big race speech while never really telling the reader why Obama felt it necessary to give the speech in the first place.

On March 24, Kristol once again quotes Wright extensively. Of course, most of the Times' liberal readers don't even skim his columns.

That same day Times sports columnist George Vecsey quoted Wright in Obama's book "Dreams From My Father," with not one hint of any controversy surrounding either of them.

On March 26, we get the Times' most extensive coverage of what Wright actually said that caused all of the previous news articles -- but apparently what it took for this to happen was for Obama's opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, to raise the issue.

Mr. Wright, who retired last month as pastor of at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, has been widely criticized since video clips of racially charged comments from his sermons surfaced on the Internet. In the sermons, he suggested that Americans bore some responsibility for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” He also blamed the government for the spread of AIDS among African-Americans, characterized the United States government as corrupt and referred to the “U.S. of K.K.K. A.”

He also made disparaging comments about Mrs. Clinton, saying she had never known the humiliation of being called a racial epithet.

The video clips of the sermons played for days on an endless loop on television news, although they have been shown less frequently since Mr. Obama addressed the subject in a speech on race last Tuesday.

Maybe that's why the Times took its dear, sweet time in reporting all of this.

A Times report on Obama's appearance on ABC's "The View" referred to Wright's comments and the controversy over them simply as an "ado."

In all of the Times subsequent reporting, Wright's actual remarks are never quoted again. Even the Times' topic page on Wright deals with the issue in a roundabout way. The page has a summary of who Wright is and why it has a page for him, but it only shows the first three paragraphs unless you click a "more" link. Only then do you get this summary:

In mid-March 2008, news stations began broadcasting clips in which Mr. Wright's most extreme statements, including snippets from sermons in which he referred to the United States as the “U.S. of K.K.K. A.” and said the Sept. 11 attacks were a result of corrupt American foreign policy.

Kristol's criticisms of the Times were not completely accurate, but it's easy to see why he might have missed the few times the so-called "paper of record" actually acted like the paper of record. By any measure, whether you're on the political right or left, Times served its readers poorly on this issue.