It’s amazing how many “expert” know-it-alls, the kind who populate cable tv-land, were not only dead wrong about the outcome of the Egyptian events, but had an ideological axe to grind in objectively supporting a loathesome dictator. Take, for example, Marc Ginsberg, former US ambassador to Morocco – one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world — and a devoted AIPAC activist who never fails to uphold whatever political line the Israeli government is pushing, albeit gently chiding the radical Likudniks for pushing too hard. He regularly holds forth on the Huffington Post, naturally enough, where, in the wake of the Tunisian revolution, he had this to say:
“It is woefully premature to pop the champagne corks extolling the eventual certitude of democratic revolution in the Arab world as if Tunisia were a Hungary, a Poland or a Romania and setting the Arab world dominoes in motion. What happened in Tunisia most likely will stay in Tunisia; it was not a revolution as much as a palace coup.”
So much for Ginsberg, the alleged “expert” who has been appearing regularly on Chris Matthews’ MSNBC program to “interpret” the Egyptian events. Aside from being wrong about the big question, however, he is weirdly wrong-headed in other ways. For example, in the Huffington piece he jumps on Al Jazeera as some sinister force:
“Â Using events in Tunisia to fuel its favorite political pastime of disgorging its anti-authoritarian editorial bias across all of its media platforms — much to the anger and hostility of most Arab rulers, particularly those Al Jazeera views as too pro-western.”
“Anti-authoritarian editorial bias”? As former ambassador to the corrupt and craven “King” of Morrocco, Ginsberg, perhaps, has a pro-authoritarian bias. Certainly we’ve never heard a word out of his mouth about the repression and brazen corruption in Morocco, as revealed by Wikileaks — which, as ambassador, he must have known about.
We all have our biases, but there is some slimey about Ginsberg’s. Al Jazeera proved its mettle from the beginning, and soon became the main source of information about what was happening on the ground in Egypt. While the rest of us look at Al Jazeera’s continuous coverage of the Egyptian uprising — undertaken at great risk to their reporters — with open-mouthed admiration, Ginsberg sourly averred:
“Stoking anger and hostility has become Al Jazeera’s mantra, and its producers have taken to heart the axiom ‘if it bleeds it leads’ to such a degree that baton-swinging policeman [sic]Â clubbing Tunisian demonstrators literally took up the entire first ten minutes of one news broadcast as the emotional reporter cried into his microphone about the unjustness of Arab autocrats.”
In Ginsberg’s world, one is supposed to politely avert one’s eyes if the scene involves the shedding of Arab blood, especially Arab blood spilled by “pro-Western” despots (and, of course, Israelis).
What I want to know is this: how does Ginsberg get to blog on the supposedly oh-so-“progressive” Huffington Post and pontificate on MSNBC, with Chris Matthews deferring to his “expertise”? Aside from having been another one of those “experts’ who got it wrong, he’s a hater and a creep.
