“Various and Sundry, 2-17-2011”
* An obnoxious trend in quotations added another example with a recent piece by Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times entitled, “We are all Egyptians.”
Despite taking a great course about Ancient Egypt during my freshman year at college and watching “The Ten Commandments” several times when I was a kid, I am no expert on Egypt. But I do know that neither I, nor almost everyone else in the United States, is an Egyptian. Though not as pathetic as John McCain’s desperate “We are all Georgians” quote during the 2008 presidential campaign, Kristoff’s use of the phrase–unlike the “We are all Americans” sentiment expressed by people around the world following 9/11–also obstructs understanding of a situation it seeks to clarify.
With 9/11 Americans of all political and societal groups were unified in trauma and others were identifying and sympathizing with that. But with the protest movement in Egypt, the quote is simplistic and condescending. If Kristoff is right, what kind of Egyptians are we? The protesters and others who want Egypt to become a secular democracy? The protesters and others who might want to move Egypt’s government toward fundamentalist Islam? Those who supported Mubarak?
Kristoff’s view of who “Egyptians” are is clearly aligned with the pro-democracy, secular protesters. I support them as well and am encouraged by their brave, peaceful, and successful effort to dislodge the autocratic Mubarak. But Kristoff and others can make their points far more effectively by avoiding use of the hackneyed “We are…” line. We are all sick of it.
* And while I’m at it, how about putting an indefinite moratorium on the never-welcome variations of “Who’s your daddy?”? Though the phrase did provide another in the long line of amusing Bobby Knight lunatic episodes, it is now being used by Congresswoman Michelle Bachman as a play on words referring to China’s President Hu. That should be enough already, right?
* After President Obama’s State of the Union Address a few weeks ago, I wrote that his use of the phrase “Win the Future” sounded like it might be the first campaign slogan of the 2012 presidential election. The writers at Slate seemed to agree and recently debuted a clever and fun Obama slogan generator.
The first three of the quintessentially Obamaish slogans it generated for me were, “Innovating for innovation,” “Forge integrity,” and my favorite, “Race to the Moon.”
