Gil Scot Heron roused 70's black americans, close on the heels of the Watts riots, with the promise that the revolution would not be televised, that we would not be able to skip out for beer in the commercials, that there would be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in instant replay (..."the revolution will be live...").
As far as Egypt's goes, he couldn't be more wrong. BBC has shown virtually nothing but the Egyptian revolution since unrest began, pictures of stone throwing and assaults by undercover police abound, and I was indeed able to skip to the kitchen for a beer without missing too much. He was correct that it will not be brought to us by Xerox, whose recent growth in the region will no doubt be hit by developments (although Exxon is pretty much Xerox spelled backwards and a few letters changed).
Mubarak, Egypt's fourth and longest standing president should be seen as a success story. Not only does he look great for a guy born in '28, he's held on to office for 30 years, and rising from his poor origins, leaves office with an estimated $30-70 Billion for his toils. A regular Rockefeller, squirrelling away whatever pennies chanced to come his way.
The revolution has concerned the arab world, sparking worries that unrest is spreading to other states led by overstaying heads of state, including Yemen (small peaceful crowds), Algeria (pressured now to end a 19 year state of emergency) and Jordan (firing their government and experiencing largest protests in 20 years) to name a few. Similar predictions, after Tunisia's fall, accurately placed Egypt at the top of the list.
And concerns extend further afield. China has censored internet searches on Egypt, lest the population get any ideas. It's easy to extrapolate that, beyond China, peoples around the globe are questioning just how absolute their leaders' power really is.
It's a massive event. And a massive event gets round the clock television attention.
Prior to the Tunis crisis, much of my news hour was being taken up by news of Laurent Gbago of Cote D'ivoire, who refused to step down from his presidency after disputed electoral results. Gbago had come to power 10 years earlier. Interestingly, this was by popular uprising and there's some reason to doubt global news coverage of this event, which repeatedly and near exclusively cites the irrelevant, non-constitutional "Ivory Coast Electoral Commission". It is also led by French protestations. The French are far from the ideal, objective interlocutor, owning for example 45% of Cd'I land (UN sources). French assisted insurrection and prolonged tensions in the country over the course of Gbago's reign, for example arming mercenaries and plotting assassination attempts.
And in the not too distant past, BBC viewers' blood boiled as British led news and the international community rained condemnation on Mugabe's treatment of white farmers. White farmers who still owned 40% of land confiscated in many cases only 40 years or so earlier.
You probably won't see it televised, well, quite like that.
Baron Acton once muttered (via letter) that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." It's interesting that last phrase eludes the collective memory, as it carries perhaps more resonance than the earlier. With this in mind, we see a bigger picture than surrounds the dramas of the petty despots or tyrannical regimes in Africa, Indonesia, Asia or the Middle East. The dramas involve our own governments, our Great Men (and women), our histories and legacies and therefore ourselves - they demand our interest.
A news issue that requires no introduction is the Wikileaks scandal. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the leaks, there can be few that see the heavy handed and surreptitious attempts to get hold of Assange and his followers as fair and honest (except perhaps Sarah Palin, who has no doubt superimposed a target over his location, on her electioneering site). Unless you would like to believe Gadaffi's take on it in the Egypt context, that Wikileaks indirectly provokes this kind of discontent. But where is the media condemnation or even cynicism.
Similarly, a friend with interests in Cote D'Ivoire has followed intensely developments there, trawling French and Cd'I internet news-sites and blogs to filter out the genuine or balanced truth. Ban ki-Moon rejects Gbago's suggestion of a vote recount as a "grave injustice" (why does that take me back to the year 2000 in Florida?) or, on Egypt, the head of this international body offers the vacuous "I urge restraint by all sides". Meanwhile, the media and television offers us the minimalist, superficial account with repeated footage of four young men yelling Mubarak is a thief, or a woman on a cellfone saying she want's everyone to get along. It offers a "trailer" - the main acts, the main facts never arrive. This was one of Assange's stated motivations for Wikileaks, to compensate for the death of journalism.
There is certainly drama in the moment, in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Algeria and beyond. The moment and the drama will pass, the televised natures of these affairs will only grow, as will our responsibility to filter or interpret them. Problem is, how often do we question, how often do we dive deeper; as Aesop Rock raps, "if the revolution ain't gonna be televised, then f*** I'll probably miss it".
The revolution WILL be televised, but he won't be missing much.
