If Frank Rich is America, then Imus is Mubarak. Or Something.

Frank Rich works for The New York Times, not the Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera, as Imus joked all morning, but he still had a lot to say about the role—if any—social media played in the recent uprising in Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak remains in power despite massive public protests calling for his immediate removal.
 
As he watched the first few days of demonstrations in Egypt, Rich was struck by the American media’s tendency to cite Twitter and Facebook as the catalysts for change.
 
“Yes, Twitter and Facebook are important tools—they play all sorts of roles in American lives, and in some people’s lives in the Middle East,” Rich said. “But these are very, very poor countries, where, frankly, most people don’t have an internet provider.”
 
Even in a relatively well-off country like Egypt, he said that only around 20 percent of people even have internet access. “It seems to be a kind of American chauvinism, to sort of dumb down what’s going on over there for American audiences, to say this is some sort of Twitter-Facebook thing,” he said. “It’s a totally different culture.”
 
It’s a culture, in Rich’s view, that most Americans don’t really understand. “But we can pretend we understand it if we say, ‘Oh, they’re just like us. They’re on Facebook,’” he said, and pointed out that revolutions happened around the world long before the existence of social media. “At a certain point, if something is going to happen in a society, it’s going to take on its own momentum.”
 
Especially when people have genuine grievances and long-festering frustrations, like in Egypt. But as with many affairs in that tumultuous region, where countries like Tunisia, Jordan, and Yemen have also been dealing with insurrections, the U.S. really has no idea what will happen next.
 
“We sort of parachute into the Middle East when it’s on fire, and then parachute out again,” Rich said. During last November’s midterm elections, for instance, just three percent of Americans cited the Middle East as an issue that mattered to them.
 
One possible outcome, at least in Egypt, is that the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization banned by Mubarak because of its opposition status and extreme beliefs, would become a more powerful entity. Not so fast, says Rich.
 
“Our default position is to think that no matter what happens, jihadists and maniacs are going to take over,” he said. “It’s not clear how powerful they really are.”
 
Even so, America has a history of supporting authoritarian, unpopular governments like Mubarak’s, which has poorly controlled Egypt for nearly 30 years but has served U.S. interests. As a result, Rich said, “We’re associated with these dictators.”
 
Kind of like how Rich, a longtime guest on this program, will forever be linked to the I-Man.
 
-Julie Kanfer