Saturday, February 12, 2011

Randi Rhodes: Freedom Friday

It's Freedom Friday, ya bastids!

Protesters in Egypt were originally calling today Farewell Friday. Then for a few hours it looked like it was going to be Frustration Friday. But all of that’s over now. There’s joy and delirium in the streets of Cairo. It’s like watching a celebration of the LA Lakers winning the NBA championship… except there’s no violence in Cairo.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has officially stepped down… no matter what you may have been told by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. First he’s in, then he’s out. The only way this could have been more confusing is if the Stanford University marching band had been involved.

This entire story has done several 180’s in the past 24 hours. Thanks a lot, Hosni. Some of us have a blog to put together, you know. Egyptian officials are saying that Mubarak flubbed his lines in his speech last night. If so, this was the most misdirected speech since Michele Bachmann’s State of the Union rebuttal. As resignation speeches go, that one left a lot to be desired. I think I missed the resignation part. I’m going to have to look at the tape again, slowing it down like an NFL replay official on a disputed call. Then I can come out from under the hood and announce “After review, the president of Egypt failed to maintain possession of the presidency all the way to the ground.” That’s officially a turnover. First down, democracy protesters.

Mubarak’s speech last night was a classic. Really Hosni, why waste your breath? You could have said the same thing with a simple and classic hand gesture. Evidently Mubarak wanted to stick around. He might as well have given the speech while handcuffed to the podium and clutching the presidential seal. Mubarak was speaking in front of dark blue curtains, but it might as well have been a wall of sandbags. And then it turns out he was leaving all along. Evidently he was willing to quit, but he just refused to tell people that he was quitting.

Well, Egypt, it’s been 30 years. Get the party started. When that’s done, you can get some political parties started. The U.S. is preparing a new package of assistance to Egypt designed to help with election organizing. Say, they might want to look into sending one of those packages to Florida.

Today’s Homework | Discuss

It took just 30 seconds for VP Omar Suleiman to announce the end of the 30-year Hosni Mubarak regime…

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