“Does the media feel good? Then congratulations are in order!”, Ezra Levant quips:
Congratulations to Iran, which has for years done its best to undermine Egypt, the largest and most powerful Muslim counterweight in the region. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn’t been a tyrant as long as Mubarak. But Ahmadinejad proved during Iran’s own rigged elections that a successful dictator doesn’t let democracy activists rally day after day in the streets — they are immediately thrown in prison, or just killed. No messy protests are allowed in the Islamic Republic of Iran — unless their hate is directed at Ahmadinejad’s enemies.
But most of all, congratulations to the journalists of the mainstream media. As always, this revolution was about them — just ask them. More media attention was given to the fact that CNN’s dreamy anchor, Anderson Cooper, was roughed up by protesters than was given to investigating the anti-women, anti-secular, anti-Semitic, anti-western ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, though they’re the likely victors of any “election” that might be held in coming months.
Most of today’s journalists are too young to have covered the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, so this was their moment. So they are weepy cheerleaders, not reporters. And they are only too happy to say “ditto” to whatever Al Jazeera tells them is happening.
The fact that some of Egypt’s protesters use Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter is so flattering because journalists love those too. Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood also uses Twitter and blogs, just as Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeinei used audio cassettes in 1979 to spread his Islamic revolution.
And let me congratulate myself for my exquisite hatred of Mubarak, a hatred that predates the current fad. I savour this moment of jubilation and vindication. And I will wait until tomorrow to contemplate my new emotion — a deep fear that, like the fall of Iran’s shah in 1979, things are about to get far, far worse.
Don’t worry, the president also thinks that Egypt is about him as well, as Levant also writes.
Related: Michael Barone on “The Risk That 2/11/11 Will End up Like Iran’s 2/11/79.”
(H/T: 5’F)
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