Five Best Wednesday Columns
Jeffrey Goldberg in Bloomberg on how the U.S. lost Egypt “Within a span of just a few years, Egyptians have somehow convinced themselves that the U.S. has been an ally of both Egypt’s former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and Mubarak’s main enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood,” Goldberg writes of the public opinion shift about the U.S. recent involvement in Egypt. How exactly did that happen? Scott Johnson of Power Line says it may have just been by listening to speeches by President Obama and Ambassador Anne Patterson. “The Obama administration has supported the Muslim Brotherhood right along.”
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Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post on the underserved hysteria for Wendy Davis Speaking for 11 straight hours in pink sneakers does not a hero make, argues Parker, who lambasts the media's soft-ball coverage of Davis and avoidance of the actual debate. "Who wants to talk about the meaning and purpose of life when you can talk about rouge-red shoes?" MSNBC's Thomas Roberts called out Parker, angry at "the fact that these are seasoned women who don't really have to worry about a woman's right to choose anymore piling on a woman who’s standing up for a woman's right to choose."
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Abdelhadi Faraj (Prisoner #329) in The Huffington Post on his treatment in Guantánamo Bay "They have beaten us and used rubber-coated bullets and tear gas against us," writes one of the 106 prisoners on hunger strike in Guantánamo Bay. "They have confined us to cold, windowless cells, beyond the reach of the sun's rays or a fresh breeze. Sometimes, we don't even know if it's day or night out." The U.S. military response has been to force-feed the strikers, though not during the fast days of Ramadan. "Big guards grab my head with both hands. I feel like my skull is being crushed. Then, so-called nurses violently push a thick tube down my nostril ... I cannot begin to describe the pain that causes."
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John Blake in CNN on being an affirmative action "imposter" In a personal essay, which Maryn McKenna of Wired calls "soul-searching," Blake writes about his journey from growing up poor in Baltimore to feeling like an imposter at the historically black college Howard University. "We had trouble believing that there was a life for us beyond West Baltimore. We didn't really talk about college, getting a white-collar job in a profession or owning a business." He argues, "I so want to believe that this nation will commit to a class-based affirmative action that will help poor students of all colors, including whites."
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Rob Delaney in The Guardian on his support for legal, safe abortion The Twitter comedian "gets serious," tweets GQ's Ana Marie Cox, and talks about politics here, with his usual wit and irony. "People like to have sex. My own research has shown that it feels really, really good," he writes. "It has its price, however, and the price for women is so very many multiples greater than it is for men." But the piece quickly turns negative attacking the "lazy," "disingenuous" "mysogyny" of those trying to limit abortion. Though sprinkled with humor, The Times of London's Harriet Addison commends him for "writing brilliantly."
