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Jewish World Review Feb. 16, 2011 12 Adar I, 5771 Liberated from Egypt coverage By Roger Simon
I am not trying to minimize the importance of the Egyptian revolution, its place in history or its lasting contribution to freedom in the Mideast. I'm just saying that after 18 days, most Americans were so bored watching it they began checking out cable channels they didn't know existed. (Did you know there is a channel devoted to people who want to watch pets? Or maybe it is a channel devoted to pets who want to watch people.)
As any TV producer can tell you, there has to be an arc to a good story: brave, oppressed people begin revolution; brave, oppressed people fight revolution; brave, oppressed people win — or lose — revolution.
In Egypt, we got stuck at the "brave, oppressed people talk about the revolution endlessly" stage.
Interesting stories also need interesting personalities if they are to go on day after day. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hid away somewhere under the pyramids in a gold-lined crypt, where he could count his rubies and emeralds without giving interviews.
The revolution itself — and perhaps this is why it succeeded — lacked a clearly defined leader. It reminded one of the (almost certainly apocryphal) quotation by 19th-century French politician Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, who allegedly said: "There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader."
But if there was a lack of leaders, there were plenty of man- and woman-on-the-street interviews. Some were fascinating, but many were repetitive, especially if you channel-surfed. The brave Google executive in a polo shirt with a big lion on it was very interesting — the first 25 times I saw him. After that, I got a little bored.
I admit, the fault was mine. But I could not help concentrating on the fashion of the revolution, especially the jackets worn by the American newsmen. Their jackets were uniformly black or dark brown — perhaps the safest color to wear at night — and they were gorgeous: They had zippers and buckles and turned-up collars and, against the hellish red and orange lighting of Tahrir Square, they looked magnificent, as if making the statement: "Throw off the yoke of authoritarianism and accept democracy, and you, too, can dress this well."
In Egypt, 44 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day. So you can imagine the shock and awe those jackets must have caused. Instead of chanting, "Freedom, freedom, freedom!" I expected the crowd to start chanting, "Prada, Prada, Prada!"
Back at home, the TV talking heads were denied the ability to don splendid foreign correspondent jackets, but they were allowed to don the cloak of universal knowledge. Some network commentators are very, very smart people. They know a lot about a few things and a little about a lot of things.
But overnight, they all transformed into experts on Egypt. How did this happen? How did they go from experts on U.S. politics, which is mostly what they talk about, to experts on a country that may be more than 10,000 years old and has a very complex modern history? They may all be geniuses. Or else they know how to use Wikipedia. In either case, they spoke with what TV requires: absolute confidence, regardless of whether you know what you are saying.
All this dragged on for 18 days, which is a very, very long time for a story in which the violence diminished instead of increasing.
But after that period, somebody — perhaps the U.S. TV networks — decided they needed a new story. And Mubarak cooperated by resigning and holing up in one of his magnificent villas in the resort town Sharm el-Sheikh. So the revolution was declared a success, and while some reporters scattered to find other countries where there might be revolutions, most U.S. reporters flew home to cover President Barack Obama's budget.
I don't know if the budget battle will last for 18 days, but I do know it is an important, even vital, story. So I am hoping the correspondents get to wear their jackets.
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