Friday, February 04, 2011

Egypt

I am not a political commentator, although I am a political person. Today I've been online looking and listening to Aljazeera English and the BBC and some of the Meretz blog posts about how it all looks from Jerusalem. Andy and I watched Anderson Cooper and some others late last night, and picked up some of the frantic quality of t.v. news which we so rarely watch.

We discussed where we get our news at my writers' group last night, and I took my usual position that if you watch t.v. you get scared: better NPR, WBAI, newspapers, or the little cooler images as seen on the computer. Some defended MSNBC and to a lesser degree CNN, but after listening to Anderson Cooper (from an "undisclosed location") getting all excited about the way the thugs had been treating journalists (but I should add, Nicholas Kristoff was on voiceover a little later, and he was full of portentious feelings about the meaning of attacking journalists too-- to move them away from something planned for tomorrow?)

But now it is tomorrow, and the massive peaceful demonstration appears to have been supported, or at least protected, by the Egyptian army. Perhaps the journalists were too full of the importance of themmselves with their hints at a new Tianamen Square. So far today (and it's night in Cairo) the pro-Mubarak hired thugs seem to be gone.

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