Heh, As’ad Abu Khalil has some highlights from the three-part, six-hour interview al-Arabiyya is doing with Egyptian president Husni Mubarak. (Hey, will all the other Egpytian candidates get a six-hour televised interview? Oh, hush. No need for such questions.) My favorite part:
And Adib [the al-Arabiyya host] is as sharp and penetrating an interviewer, and as challenging to people in power, as is…Larry King. One of his questions to Mubarak (I am not making this up): How do you reconcile between your firmness, strength, punctuality, and discipline, and between your good-heartness, civility, good-naturalness on the other hand? (“Experience”, answered Mubarak).
Now that’s hard-hitting! Why, it reminds me of one of my favorite sequences from George W. Bush’s own three-part interview with Bill O’Reilly last fall:
O’REILLY: Philosophically, let’s talk philosophically. Do you think you get a fair shake?
BUSH: Look I, that’s up for the people to decide that. You know, I — I just tell people what I think. And I try to be as clear as I can be. You know, when it’s all said and done, and people look at this campaign, they’re going to have to decide whether or not they want somebody who tells them what he believes and doesn’t change positions based upon pressure and polls or, or articles in newspapers.
O’REILLY: A guy over at “Newsweek,” Evan Thomas, one of the editors over there, said eighty percent of the elite media favors Kerry.
BUSH: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
O’REILLY: That doesn’t surprise you, does it?
Hm…. Ah, just kidding, of course. In fairness, looking over the O’Reilly interview, he was a lot more confrontational than the sycophantic Egyptian press. Or at least “quite a bit more” confrontational. Yes. I don’t know if Fox wants to use that as a tag line or anything, but they’re welcome to.
