For a start, unlike the battles over the “NEA Four” and Chris Ofili’s painting The Holy Virgin Mary (the one that incorporated elephant dung), the censoring impulse this time is coming from the left at least as much as the right (as with Dana Schutz’s painting of the murdered Emmett Till). However, argues Isaac Kaplan, the key difference between then and now isn’t the political identification of those objecting to the art – it’s how much actual power they have.