At the New York Times blog The Lede, Robert Mackey and Kareem Fahim report:
The American comedian Jon Stewart’s criticism of the Egyptian government briefly escalated into a diplomatic incident on Tuesday, as the United States Embassy in Cairo shared a link to a “Daily Show” segment on Twitter, causing the office of Egypt’s president to react with anger.
Mr. Stewart devoted the first 11 minutes of his program on Monday to mocking Egypt’s continuing investigation of Bassem Youssef, the Arab world’s most popular television comedian, for the supposedly criminal use of satire in jokes about President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamist political party.
There is much more in the Mackey/Fahim report, all of it worth a look. They also post Stewart’s 11-minute commentary below. What is a source of anger to Morsi’s office is, well, anger management therapy to me.
THIS JUST IN: NRO reports: “According to Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s official Twitter account, the U.S. ambassador to the country has apologized for tweeting a link to a video of Comedy Central host Jon Stewart criticizing Morsi.”
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