NEED A LITTLE RAIN ON YOUR PARADE? I’M YOUR MAN!

2/11/11

As I write this, I’m watching the CNN coverage of the events in Egypt in the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s stepping down and, presumably, high-tailing it to Sharm El Shiekh. To call CNN’s treatment of the subject “coverage” is stretching the definition of the term; what I am watching is not reporting but unabashed cheerleading for the crowd (mob?) in Tahrir Square. Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, a bunch of people I don’t recognize (I am not a regular CNN, or Fox News, for that matter, watcher. I prefer news. When I want cheerleading, I will watch a Hawkeye or Fighting Illini game, but I digress.), and their identically minded colleagues simply cannot contain their joy at this turn of events. They, at one point, stopped speaking (an enormous sacrifice for these notables) to allow the viewers to just listen to the celebrating in the streets. They have urged viewers to simply “drink in” the sounds of unbridled joy of these “extraordinary developments.” One reporter tells us that this will be one of those occasions during which we will always remember where we were when it was taking the place. (The more sober among us remember where we were during many momentous events that took place before this ingenuous reporter was born. This gives us a perspective that these youthful cheerleaders have yet to attain. I only digress mildly here.) We are constantly being reminded of how peaceful the crowd is. We are told of the “dancing in the streets” that is taking place in Tahrir Square (What sane man “dances in the streets?” Is anyone actually “dancing” in any of these streets? I digress.) A 20 something protestor was put on the air to proclaim that “Egypt will be a democracy. You will be surprised at the progress we make.” He went on to say, and not at the prompting of the CNN crew, that “We are dreamers.” Never have truer words been uttered.

The reporters, of course, continue to talk of Mr. Mubarak yielding to the will of “the people,” confusing, as I said in yesterday’s (“DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?”) and February 3’s (AFTER ALL THESE CENTURIES, THE EGYPTIANS STILL HAVE SOMETHING TO TEACH US, PART II) posts, the will of those with the time and means to demonstrate in the street with the will of the people. Doubtless those Egyptians who are too busy scratching out a living to “dance in the streets” and/or those who own property and actually have a stake in the system wanted Mr. Mubarak to leave, but they wanted him to do so in a more orderly manner than that which is being cheered from the safe distances of New York and Washington. See again, yesterday’s post “DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?”

Listening to the CNN coverage of these events (and I suspect most of the hyper-yuppified media is engaging in similar fulsome, unapologetic cheerleading, but I can only listen to one network at a time), one gets the impression that, given the age and the mindset of the “reporters,” these estimables are fondly remembering those evenings of their youth, when their parents would gather them around the kitchen table and regale them with tales of their halcyon days of burning down our nation’s campuses in the ‘60s. How else does one account for the stunning, starry-eyed naiveté of such “coverage?” Further, given the brief comments from Joe Biden, who is old enough to know better, we can expect that President Obama’s speech will be more of the same ingenuous drivel. After all, Mr. Obama’s administration is peopled with similar descendents of the “peace, pot, and power to the people” crowd.

One supposes that none of these people have stopped to think that, with both Hosni Mubarak and Vice-President Omar Suleiman having stepped down, no one is in charge in Egypt. Supposedly, power has been handed to something called a governing council, composed primarily, but not exclusively, of the military and the judiciary, but since when has government by a committee, which in this case make take on many characteristics of revolutionary France’s Committee of Public Safety, or by the military been such a source of unbridled joy for the scions of the “Wow, man, like far out!” generation? The wise men at the CNN desk are now interviewing Mohammed El Baradei, the Rahm Emanuel of Egypt (See my 1/29/11 post “…HE’S AN EGYPTIAN…” ???) in the hopes that this poseur, who has spent scant time in Egypt the last twenty or so years, will somehow lead Egypt to nirvana. Good luck with that one, kids. Egypt had a chance, and only a chance, to be free had Mr. Mubarak’s exit been done in an orderly, reasoned, and sane manner. Now? The best bet now is chaos, chaos, and more chaos.

Have any of these silly people stopped to think that this sort of thing may, and likely will, spread to other places in the Middle East? Have they considered that the enormous limousines in which they are driven around actually use petroleum products for motivation? Nah; they are too caught up with their naïve conceptions of how the world ought to work…or not work

Two final notes:

I am now even more comfortable with my bullish oil and gold bets and am seeing rays of hope for my continuing bearishness on stocks as Wall Street, apparently increasingly populated by those ignorant or naïve about foreign affairs, apparently think what is happening in Egypt is great news.

In keeping with my overall approach to foreign policy, it looks like the Egyptians, not we, have a problem, as do lots of people in the Middle East. The best thing we can do is nothing. Doing anything is a no-win situation, as we are seeing in Egypt at this very moment. But don’t count on it; the Bush/Obama Administration, and the geniuses in Congress, are quite confident that their manifest wisdom does not stop at the water’s edge.