The Emperor
had no clothes. Or rather, the Emperor was wearing one too many, according to
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-dominated administration. The last straw that got television
comedian and chat show host Bassem Youssef arrested was a satire on President
Morsi wearing an outsize ceremonial hat bestowed on him during an official
visit to Pakistan recently.
Youssef’s
avowed idol and inspiration, Jon Stewart, pointed out on The Daily Show that he
spent much of the eight years of the Bush administration making fun of the
President wearing big funny hats- cowboy hats. But Egypt is not the U.S., and
never has been. Bassem Youssef would not even have been allowed to go on air
with his show under Mubarak, let alone make fun of the President and the Muslim
Brotherhood Party week after week. After the revolution of January 2011,
Youssef went from doing ten minute video clip spoofs on YouTube to hosting a
two-hour, must-see TV show every Friday night, with millions around the Arab
world tuning in.
As the
popularity of his show grew exponentially every week, Bassem Youssef, a practicing
heart surgeon by profession who first started producing his skits in his own basement,
went on to host on glossy studio sets on the most widely-watched cable channels
in Egypt. He self-consciously modeled himself on his idol Jon Stewart: from Stewart’s
mannerisms and self-depreciation to the format of the show to the host’s trademark
irreverence and lewd innuendos- par for the course for an American comedian but
shocking in a socially conservative country like Egypt.
And like
Jon Stewart, Bassem Youssef at his best could be excruciatingly funny while
debunking false claims and exposing the hypocrisy of the party in power with
the deadly precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Until the authorities, forced to acknowledge
the power of ridicule, were no longer able to ignore him. More than once, he
was warned and ordered to cease and desist, to no avail. If, once or twice, his
program seemed to be pulling its punches, dissatisfied viewers threatened to
tune out in droves, and he returned in full force. Finally Youssef was arrested
last week and interrogated, while thousands stood vigil outside the Attorney
General’s office and millions more stood vigil on the social media. Even the
U.S. Embassy in Egypt tweeted about the topic. And in the U.S., not only Jon
Stewart but NBC, CBS, and television world-wide reported on the Bassem Youssef
cause celebre.
No doubt domestic and international pressure played
their part in the decision of the Attorney General to release Youssef. That same
night, Bassem Youssef put on a show that pulled no punches. But he was the
first to acknowledge that he had the luxury of relative impunity on account of
his celebrity, and if that were lifted, so would his immunity. And he
acknowledged, by name, the many dissident media figures now in jail who were
victims of the public’s fickle span of attention. If you forget them and don’t
speak out for them, he said, one day no one will speak out for you. He seemed
to be speaking for himself.
