More on Egypt

Since I’ve been remiss in my rather limited coverage of the crisis in Egypt, I turn to the brilliant staff of writers at Slate to help me out. They’ve put out a number of great articles that should be required reading for anyone looking to seriously and critically think about the revolution in Egypt and its overall importance:

1. The Explainer details the ways in which Egyptians’ right to free speech is curtailed.
2. Hitchens argues that dictators like Mubarak face overthrow not because of their ruthless control over their citizenry, but because they insult their citizens by holding fake elections and the like. He also reminds us that the lure of the stable dictatorship is illusory and ought to be tossed in the trash.
3. Shmuel Rosner preaches caution, because revolutions are unpredictable and dangerous. Remember Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution, which Rosner points out has crashed and burned.
4. Foreign Policy profiles eight US allies besides Mubarak that embarrass the US.

Also check out this brief NPR interview with Egyptian dissident and Harvard professor, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who discusses US aid to Egypt and how it can use that aid to promote human rights.

Underage sex on TV and freedom of speech

Conservative blogs and television personalities turned their sights to MTV today, questioning whether the network’s new show, “Skins,” is appropriate, or even legal. The show, adapted from a BBC drama, focuses on the sex lives of teenagers, and, according to a New York Times piece, might violate federal child porn statutes (because one episode revolves around a teen, played by a 17 year-old, who takes Viagra and runs around naked with an erection). On Sean Hannity’s ‘Great American Panel,’ it was argued by one panelist that the show might lead to the “legalization of pedophilia.” Hannity himself stated that while he defends freedom of speech in the context of say, the incendiary rhetoric that has been challenged in the wake of the Tucson tragedy, he draws the line with children.

To his credit, Hannity stopped short of saying that shows like “Skins” should be banned from television, but he still trotted out the same tired social conservative line on freedom of speech: as long as it doesn’t offend my sensibilities I support freedom of speech, but things get cloudy when I find a subject objectionable. I just don’t understand why a show like “Skins” so riles conservative Americans while “Law & Order: SVU” and the various “CSI” shows regularly feature violent imagery and often center their plot lines around child rape.

I consider my political affiliation to be somewhat fluid and certainly anchored on the left of American politics. But I flirt with conservatism every so often. What most keeps me from taking that flirtation to the next level (among other things) is the claustrophobic puritanism exhibited by social conservatives who think that freedom of speech ends once that speech involves a (healthy) discussion of sex.