The job of a pundit is to reduce a complex situation to something simple and then pass judgment on it. Grateful readers admire the pundit for his perspicacity. Ungrateful readers marvel at his incomprehension.
I’d had a queasy feeling that applauding the Egyptian army for hitting the “reset” button on Egypt’s revolution—basically telling the country, we reserve the right to kick out your governments until you come up with one we like—would strike anyone well acquainted with Egypt as absurd. Was this not an example of what the press has long called “Afghanistanism”—editorial pages playing Dutch uncle to societies at the far ends of the earth, telling them what they’d better do if they know what’s good for them?
Writing in Britain’s Guardian, Fayed indulged the military by calling the coup a “change of government,” but he was otherwise unsparing. It had been a “dark week for media freedom in Cairo,” he said, and Al Jazeera had been “singled out for extra special treatment.” He said 28 of its staffers were detained, feeds from Cairo to Doha were interrupted, and “personally, I was hounded away from a military press conference by supposed fellow journalists. The astonishing press conference ended with the assembled media offering the spokesman a round of applause.”
A video of the news conference has been posted online, and if your Arabic is up to snuff you can watch it yourself and decide where your sympathies lie. Such is the miracle of social media. But if your Arabic isn’t, you’re out of luck. In another era, the Tribune might have had its own correspondent in the room and the New York Times probably would have. But this appears to be one fallen Middle East government too many for both papers. David Brooks can write what he pleases on the op-ed page without concern that his views will be compromised on page one.
