The Lighter Side: Some Tweets from "Round One" of the Debate

After long delays in getting started and nearly two hours of debate, "round one" of the Egyptian Presidential debate is over. They're taking a thirty minute break as I write this, then coming back for another 90 minutes. If my math is right this thing will go past midnight in Cairo. So I thought, since it will be hours before it's over, some of the more amusing Twitter commentary in English (hashtag #monazarat) would be worth preserving. There's a lot of serious commentary out there too, but I'm going for the humor here. And I know most Egyptians aren't on Twitter and most of those who are post in Arabic, but this is for my broader audience.

And yes, they called it the end of "Round One." So naturally:

Not surprisingly, the lengthy delays drew a lot of comments. One candidate was delayed in traffic, which was one reason for the delay:

...which led to this comment:

But once Abu al-Futuh arrived, he paused for afternoon prayer, and the hosts did their talking head thing for longer and longer . . .



 The whole thing was preceded by lengthy ads. (State TV wasn't broadcasting it so commercial TV did it up commercially.) Then it was interrupted periodically by long commercial breaks. Perhaps the best comment I've seen on this:
Some of the other comments about the commercials:

While using up time the hosts ran clips of US Presidential debates from Kennedy-Nixon onward, but apparently made one slip-up:

When the debates actually began, most of the tweets became more serious, but there were odd moments:

Not everyone was watching or impressed (rude word warning):

And some were wondering about the man who wasn't there: