Egypt coverage

Broke my vow to post daily. That's mostly because my back gave out, which made it hard to type but easy to watch lots of Egypt coverage.

Maybe I'm overly-sensitized to this because of what I'm reading, but I was struck by how often Egypt is described as an economic revolution. Hillary Clinton kept talking about economic opportunity at the start of the U.S. Government reactions to the protest; though she talked quite a bit about democracy as well, cable pundits have been all about the economic part ever since. Second on the topic list has been a sort of poor-man's realpolitik, in which we make vague references to American security without actually owning up much to what we're after. Democracy runs a distant third.

Any revolution has a big economic component. But when we talk about 1776 in the U.S., tax issues don't lead off the story. This is a political revolution. I have yet to see an Egyptian protester demand an end to price controls. They're risking their lives to bring down a dictator. They talk about free elections. They talk about political prisoners. They deserve to be taken seriously, no?