A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

For the PR "Oops" Hall of Fame: 3 of the 5 "for all Egyptians" Poster Models Aren't Egyptian, and they Misspelled "Egyptians"

According to this Daily Telegraph article, as well as this NYT blogpost, three of the five "Egyptians" on the poster behind the press conference promoting the January referendum on the new constitution "a constitution for all Egyptians" are, in fact, stock photos from American advertising sites. Only the soldier at right and the elderly lady in the middle are clearly Egyptian.

Oh, and, ya know, when you're appearing in front of a poster with "a constitution for all Egyptians" on it, you might, ya know, want to spell "Egyptians" right, maybe?
It should read المصريين: It reads المصرين.

I fear this tells us something about the constitution as well, but perhaps I'm wrong.

UPDATE: An anonymous commenter thinks of a worse case I'd missed:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
On the bright side it didn't say
مرسيين
(Morsiyyin, supporters of Morsi,) Wish I'd thought of that!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

On the bright side it didn't say
مرسيين

Michael Collins Dunn said...

I hadn't thought of that!