Mohamed Who?

Since the return of Mohamed ElBaradei to Egypt, the official government press has either ignored him completely (see this daily roundup at Al-Masry al-Youm of a day in which the government press ignored him and the independent and opposition papers led with him), or else they have been making fun of him, even in one case basically saying he won't give interviews with the government press because his wife won't let him (that's an English language blogger's summary; the link was to Al-Gumhuriyya's home page a day or two ago, and today the link goes to today's homepage; I poked around briefly without finding the story but it may be archived somewhere on the site). Do they think branding him as henpecked (his wife's a professional in her own right) will dilute his support?

I'm not surprised, but in the age of the Internet, satellite television, and independent newspapers in Egypt, it seems that the pettiness shown by the state media ought to seem fairly glaring even to Mubarak's staunch supporters. The fellahin may not know about ElBaradei's return, but they aren't his constituency. Does the state press think their ignoring him will make him go away? Does it think making fun of him will make people see him as a clown, a man of whom the state media was itself enormously proud when he was head of the IAEA and one of the most recognizable Egyptians in the Western world (after Mubarak, and of course Zahi Hawass, who is on one of your cable TV channels in his Indiana Jones hat right now)?

It just seems like something out of the pre-Internet era, the pre-satellite TV era, that distant time nearly 30 years ago when the local state media was the only media and Husni Mubarak was President of Egypt.

Oh.