Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • rumblings
So each leader goes back to his capital and prepares a television address.
In Washington, Obama says, “My fellow Americans, I have good news
and bad news. The good news is that I can confirm that God exists. The bad
news is that he told me the world would end in two days.”
In Moscow, Putin says, “People of Russia, I regret that I have to inform
you of two pieces of bad news. First, God exists, which means everything
our country has believed in for most of the last century was false. Second,
the world is ending in two days.”
In Cairo, Mubarak says, “O Egyptians, I come to you today with two
pieces of excellent news! First, God and I have just held an important summit.
Second, he told me I would be your president until the end of time.”
Kassem quips that the Mubarak regime’s main legacy may be an unparalleled
abundance of derision about its leader. “Under Nasser, it was the elite
whose property he had nationalized that told jokes about the president,” he
told me. “Under Sadat, it was the poor people left behind by economic liberalization
who told the jokes. But under Mubarak, everyone is telling jokes.”
Yet an increasing number of Egyptians no longer think their country’s
situation is all that funny, and they are turning the national talent for wit
into a more aggressive weapon of political dissidence. The anti-Mubarak
Kifaya movement has used humor most poignantly to protest the indignity
of an entire country becoming a hand-me-down for the Mubarak family, as
the leader presses on with plans to anoint his son Gamal as his heir. Other
protesters complaining about the rising cost of living and stagnating salaries
use cartoons to depict fat-cat politicians and tycoons pillaging the country.
And since the beginning of 2010, Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, former
director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a potential
presidential challenger, has become a symbol of the kind of dignified leadership
the Egyptian opposition has sought for decades. Notably, he recently
scolded Mubarak for an inappropriate joke about a ferry crash that killed
more than 1,000 Egyptians in 2006.
But even if Egypt’s democrats fail to prevent the inheritance of the presidency,
they will certainly keep making fun of Mubarak’s son Gamal. One
epic satire comes in the form of a popular blog called Ezba Abu Gamal (“The
Village of Gamal’s Father”). The blog is a collection of entries, usually from
the perspective of Abu Gamal, mayor of a small village. He is constantly be-
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