by Conor Friedersdorf
He doesn't say so, but this Tony Comstock post on X-rated movies and how they've evolved over the decades makes me think that the perverse affect of the rating system we've adopted has been to make almost all explicit depictions of sex about lust rather than love. I wonder if he would agree with that intuition.
by Patrick Appel
Goldblog calls the departure of Mubarak potentially "a stunning defeat for al Qaeda":
If it is true that Hosni Mubarak is stepping down, the people of Egypt will have rejected the al Qaeda argument that there is only one way to defeat autocracy in the Arab world. Remember Bin Laden's notion: Attacks on the U.S., the far enemy, are meant to weaken the close enemy, the regimes that rule most Arab countries. The people of Egypt are traveling a different path.
by Chris Bodenner
Eric Trager sees it:
For the moment, the Muslim Brotherhood's lax, backseat role has added to Egyptian liberal leaders' confidence. "I don't think they can be a leader of the opposition," says Ghad party leader Shadi Taha. "Looking at the political playground, there might be some support for the Muslim Brotherhood, but it can't be more than 15 percent." Yet in a country where few people have any experience voting, a tightly organized political movement stands to mobilize voters more effectively than the looser, liberal organizations now leading the demonstrations. And therein lies the true genius of the Muslim Brotherhood's strategy: It knows that it can win in the long run, if it can emerge relatively unscathed over the short run.
(Photo: Muslim Brotherhood spokespersons Essam el-Arian (C) and Mohammed Mursi (R) hold a press conference with local and international journalists in Cairo on February 9, 2011 where they said that the Brotherhood remains open to dialogue with the Egyptian regime, but repeated their demand for President Hosni Mubarak to leave office immediately. By Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images)
by Conor Friedersdorf
A short clip from a long, enjoyable debate. I've long been a huge fan of Heather Mac Donald's work in City Journal, and Vesla Weaver makes some good points too:
by Patrick Appel
Alan Abramowitz examines the historical record on presidential turnover:
In the past hundred years, there have been ten presidential elections in which an incumbent president was seeking a second term in the White House for his party with the most recent being 2004. The key distinction here is the number of terms the incumbent’s party has been in office, not the number of terms the individual incumbent has been in office.
Incumbent party candidates have won nine of those ten first term elections. Jimmy Carter in 1980 was the only first term incumbent party candidate in the past century to lose and it took a devastating combination of recession, inflation, and public frustration over the seemingly endless Iran hostage crisis to bring him down.
In contrast to first term incumbents, second or later term incumbents have had a much harder time winning reelection. In the past century, eight incumbents have sought a third or later term in the White House. Four of them won while four lost, including the most recent second term incumbent—George H.W. Bush in 1992. And non-incumbents seeking a third or later term for their party have fared even worse. Of the seven non-incumbents seeking a third or later term in the White House for their party, only one was successful. Ironically, it was George H.W. Bush in 1988.
Nevertheless Abramowitz expects the election to be close.
by Chris Bodenner
Many commentators are reading the tea leaves today, including Blake Hounshell:
A military spokesman popped up to say that the military would meeting regularly to discuss the situation in the country, noting that the people's demands were "legitimate." Neither Mubarak nor his deputy Omar Suleiman were shown to be present at the meeting. So, are actually witnessing a military coup?
The NYT has more on the Army's sudden visibility. AJE provides more clues:
7:53pm: Leader of opposition Karama movement tells Al Jazeera he believes "the military approached Mubarak and told him it was time to go".
7:50pm: More on that concern of the Muslim Brotherhood. " It looks like a military coup," said the Brotherhood's Essam al-Erian. "I feel worry and anxiety. The problem is not with the president, it is with the regime."
6:44pm: Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports the military presence in downtown Cairo has increased in recent hours, with greater numbers of tanks making a highly visible presence.
Scott Lucas wonders:
Is there a clue in this message from Saeed Ahmed of CNN, "Egypt State TV changes tone, runs promo showing protestors shaking hands with military, saying 'Egypt is Changing'."
[CNN correspondent Ben] Wedeman added that "the change in State TV's tone is fascinating." After attempting to demonize or just ignore the protesters on the streets for the past two weeks, now, Mr. Wedeman reports, "Nile TV has really changed its tone: they heart Tahrir."
(Photo: Egyptian anti-government demonstrators perform the evening prayers in front of Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) as tens of thousands gather at Cairo's Tahrir Square on February 10, 2011 on the 17th day of consecutive protests calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. By Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images)
Virtually normal finally. Back Monday. Can't believe I missed a revolution. — Andrew.
by Patrick Appel
Ta-Nehisi's meditates on the birth of his son:
For reasons beyond me, childbirth–in the popular American mind–is swaddled in gossamer, gift-wrap, and icing. Beneath the pastel Hallmark cards and baby showers, behind the flowers, lies a truth encoded, still, in our wording, but given only minimal respect–the charge of shepherding life is labor. It's work. And you need only look to the immediate past, or you need only look around the world, or you need only come close to losing the love of your small, young life to understand a correlating truth–pregnancy is potentially lethal work.
by Chris Bodenner
The founders of 1000Memories, a free service that creates online profiles for deceased loved ones, designed a special page called Egypt Remembers to commemorate the Egyptians killed during the uprising. Alexia Tsotsis details the project's development:
[T]he page immediately went viral, bringing in over 150,ooo unique views in the first 48 hours. Since it went up it has garnered over 46,835 Facebook shares and 4,121 tweets. “At some point we were getting over a tweet per minute. People were rallying around it because it puts a face on the numbers we see in the news,” said co-founder [Rudy] Adler.
by Patrick Appel
Reporting from Cairo, Graeme Wood's says it "falls now to the protesters to prove that their revolution is alive and hasn't turned into a mere carnival":
These crowds [in Tahrir square] are a blessing. Until recently, the government could paint the demonstrators as foreign-led subversives. Now, Egyptians know the subversion is real but homegrown. Yet increasingly, the blessing seems mixed. Of the newcomers to the square, few are hard-core revolutionaries. Instead, they are tourists from Cairo and beyond, snapping photos and gawking at the remarkable spectacle of their president ridiculed, hanged in effigy, and taunted in a venue where he was once scarcely mentioned in an unflattering way.
The square was once mobilized for self-defense, and at the rattle of a piece of sheet metal, a hundred men and women would sprint toward the threat, ready to be maimed for the cause of freedom. Now it takes ten minutes to cover the same distance, and you'd have to push past vendors of popcorn and novelty sunglasses to get there.
The protesters have tried to keep momentum by spilling south toward Parliament. But Parliament is not enough, and everyone knows it. The two sites commonly mentioned for the protesters' next step are the president's palace and the state TV building, which in January was attacked but not seized. During my years in Cairo, before any of the recent troubles, the state TV building was always heavily guarded and assumed to be a vital prize for anyone attempting a coup. It remains a forbidding target, with snipers in the windows and tanks on the streets. If the protesters mobilize to march there, expect violence.
Scott Lucas's related thoughts here.
The Dish 