As riots continued to spread across Egypt, The Daily Show correspondents lat night tried to pin down a cause for the violent protests.
“They don’t like Mubarak?” Jon Stewart asked. “Then why do they keep electing him in landslides?”
Stewart then noted how the riots in Tunisia and Egypt prompted disparate reactions from the U.S. government. Whereas lawmakers — including President Obama in his State of the Union address — voiced support for Tunisian demands for democracy, they took a more cautious, ‘wait and see’ approach to Egypt.
“See, Tunisia’s reputation is as a more secular, moderate nation,” Stewart explained. “Whereas Egypt sits atop one the region’s largest reserves of untapped Islamist rage.”
He then brought in four correspondents, each bearing a T-shirt denoting what potentially destabilizing factor they represented. Team W argued that the Bush doctrine convinced Egypt to reform or face America’s military might; Team O said Obama’s message of peace and change sparked the uprising; and Team Twitter credited–through grating condescension–social media for the riots.
Finally, Team Local Conditions presented a logical argument linking a deteriorating quality of life to the riots. Yet he was quickly interrupted, and the debate ended in baseless arguments.
Watch the video:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Rule of the Nile | ||||
|
||||
