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‘Mubarak: bad guy, right? Protesters: bad guys, right?’ Events in Egypt cause conniption fits and confusion over at Fox studios Fox News hosts were torn between their idealistic belief in freedom and democracy for all people, and their fear of repercussions for the US if the people of Egypt prevail. Sean Hannity Hannity was disappointed by the Obama administration’s ambiguous response to the Egyptian riots and didn’t see much hope of a positive outcome ( view clip here ). “I am unaware of any democratic revolution that’s taken place in an Arab country and so my scepticism is that we’re going to see the Muslim Brotherhood, ElBaradei or some type of extremist, as bad as Mubarak is, some type of extremist element take over in Egypt.” He asks his guest, conservative commentator Ann Coulter if she shared his suspicion. Coulter admitted that she was not an expert on Egypt, but that she is somewhat of an expert on unruly mobs and liberals (flip sides of the same coin, apparently). And she agreed wholeheartedly with Hannity that there was no hope of a positive outcome as the protesters were a “dangerous mob”, some of whom were going around “smashing national museums and decapitating mummies”. Hannity did point out that the “mob” might, in fact, have some legitimate concerns worth protesting over and he alluded (in a somewhat garbled fashion) to the extremely high unemployment rate, particularly among the Egyptian youth. Do you not … look, if you’ve got 40% or 50% of the population living in poverty and 30% of the young people – you know, ah, 60% of the population is under 30 and 90% of them can’t find work – there seems to me that there is some democratic motivations behind some of the protest. What I’m worried about is that has now been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and those that want to take power, which will put in place a far worse dictatorship than the one we see now. Coulter chimed that changes do need to be made in Egypt and that the regime was “brutally unfair” and a dead-end society, (which she claimed, to no objection from her host, is the same sort of society that Obama wants to create in America). But she still maintained that no good can come from the current demonstrations, and that President Obama was wrong to lend even tepid support to the protesters. Hannity did not demur at her assessment, reiterating his fear that the worst may be yet to come. Bill O’Reilly O’Reilly was less concerned with the problems facing the Egyptian people than with finding the best way to ensure America’s interests continue to be served. He discussed the issue with Glenn Beck ( view clip here ). “So let’s connect the dots here. Mubarak: bad guy, right? Thirty years we’ve been dealing with this guy, and we’re in bed with him. We pay him a billion and a half dollars a year aid, and most of it goes to the military, but it goes back to his pocket a lot of it. OK? And he does us favours.” Beck agrees that Mubarak is, indeed, a very bad guy who has done very bad things, as O’Reilly elaborates on the positives and negatives of propping up a dictator. I mean, he’s against the jihadists. He doesn’t cause any trouble with Israel. He takes some of the al-Quaida captives and dunks them in the water, whatever he does to them, and he generally cooperates with the United States on global initiatives. Meanwhile, he brutalises his own people and they hate his guts. So, while O’Reilly had some reservations about the plight of the Egyptian people living under a brutal regime, he was more worried about Egypt falling to the jihadists whom he believes are the single greatest threat to democracy. Beck argues that the communist-socialist-progressive movement is an equally dangerous threat, but they both agree that America cannot afford an all-out war. We can’t fight they way we fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. I agree with you 100%. We have to do surgical stuff and we have to be more ruthless. We do stand for democracy. We do stand for that. We just don’t have … in some places. As he struggles to complete his thought, Beck, wearing his humanitarian hat, jumps in to remind him that Mubarak is “torturing people with our money”. In response, O’Reilly finds himself playing devil’s advocate for the devil he knows. Think about it: 30 years, you had Carter, Clinton, two years Obama, Reagan … they had nowhere else to go in that country. I’ve been there. It’s chaos. They had no where else to go! The chaotic state of the world seems to have been contagious in Fox News land, too. Glenn Beck Earlier on his own programme ( view clip here ), Glenn Beck had so many devils dancing around in his brain as a result of the chaos in Egypt that he was at a total loss as to who to support, who to oppose or, indeed, what to do about any of it, other than to urge his viewers to follow the events in Egypt very closely as they are sure to have dire repercussions for Americans. He admitted that, some years ago, he would have been all too apt to ignore the happenings of so remote a region (he’s referring, I believe, to his young adulthood when he was, by his own account, more focused on substance abuse). But those days are over. He studied the issue all weekend and raised so many questions in relation to it that it was almost impossible to find one salient point to focus on. For example, he was concerned that a Muslim Caliphate is about to take over the Middle East and parts of Europe; that China is going to control Asia and North Africa, Australia and probably New Zealand; and that Russia will be taking over the old Soviet block and, for some random reason, the Netherlands. He also wondered if the chaos did not really happen because “a Tunisian kid had his fruit cart taken away,” and that the downtrodden and unemployed are not really rioting because they are downtrodden and unemployed but because they are being manipulated by darker forces who are out to undermine democracy at all costs. (I’m not sure how bringing down a dictatorship undermines democracy, but there you go.) Then, there was the issue about whether the Middle East is really capable of self-rule, or if they are “crazed animals” who have to be “contained by some dictator”. All in all, it was a wearying hour of television. His thoughts on the “coming insurrection”, of which he spoke in a quivering voice seem worth sharing, however. I’ve told you that this is a global movement. Could you play this out for me and just humour me for a second? Here, we have Egypt. It started in Tunisia, Tunisia then leapfrogged Libya and went right over here to Egypt. But the fires are starting here, as well [Libya]. But we see them here [Egypt]. This [Tunisia] is already in revolution and flipped. This is in revolution. I want you to look where Israel is, right here, and Israel, the Gaza strip is on fire. You have any idea, this strait, how much congress [sic] is done through here. You, also, this little area. All the oil from the UAE, everything flows through here. So, the Middle East is on fire. What’s even more worrying is that Beck believes the chaos has already spread beyond the Middle East to North Africa, and even much closer to home. Morocco is on fire. What’s across from Morocco? Spain, connected to France and Germany and Italy, also on fire, and Greece, also on fire, which brings you right back here to Turkey. The entire Mediterranean is on fire. More than that, it’s not just the surrounding countries of the Mediterranean; it also spreads up here. You have the UK and Ireland already with riots in the street! So, there you have it: Asia, Africa and Europe are all in flames. America is surely next, and it’s all because of jihadists and the socialist-communist-progressives with their sick, Soros-funded agenda that people are entitled to a living wage and jobs with benefits. It’s chaos out there, you know. Egypt Fox News Fox US television Glenn Beck Republicans Islam Religion Protest US politics US foreign policy Tunisia Sadhbh Walshe guardian.co.uk