The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Out on a Limb
- “Fitch Downgrades Egypt Outlook to Negative”–headline, Associated Press, Jan. 28
- “Protests May Hurt Egypt Tourism”–headline, WSJ.com, Jan. 30
- “The long-term consequences of a more populist and nationalistic Egypt might be better for the United States than the stasis of the Mubarak era, and the terrorism that it helped inspire. But then again they might be worse.”–Ross Douthat, New York Times, Jan. 31
Bloomberg vs. New York
“The Egyptian National Museum is safe, and cultural artifacts damaged by vandals who broke into the building during anti-government protests can be restored, the head of the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said,” Bloomberg reports:
Tourism police aided by protesters earlier apprehended nine men in connection with looting at the museum, Zahi Hawass, the council’s secretary general, said yesterday. Dozens of demonstrators had stood guard around the building, one of Cairo’s biggest tourist attractions, to protect it until troops arrived, he said.
“If you shut the lights in New York City for one hour, the people will rob everything in all the shops,” Hawass said in an interview at his office. “What’s happening is normal. Thankfully, all the damaged items can be restored.”
Actually, there was a major blackout in New York City in August 2003. Where we lived, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the lights were out for about 24 hours. The New York Times reported at the time that incidents of looting “remained light” and was “concentrated largely in central Brooklyn.”
Hawass’s put-down of New York goes uncorrected in the report, even though it is bunk–and you’d expect editors at Bloomberg, of all places, to recognize it as bunk.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
