Sunday, August 22, 2010

Haykal Show on Aljazeera

I take it back.  Kamal Khalaf At-Tawil was right when he kept insisting to me that the Haykal show on Aljazeera is wroth watching.  I started early on and he was too far back in history for me to be interested and i mocked the show.  I have been critical of Haykal's political roles, especially as a close adviser to Answar Sadat who helped the latter in consolidating his power (before Sadat got rid of him), but I have been watching recent episodes and they are great TV.  Haykal comes to the show extremely prepared and he is most articulate with a large reservoir of anecdotes and Arabic poetry.  He speaks in full sentences and full paragraphs.  I saw the one about the Egyptian ban on Radio Palestine after Nasser accepted the Rogers Plan.  And it was quite interesting.