Queen mother of Qatar. When she speaks people listen and look !!Yesterday we learned Al Jazeera launched its new network, Al Jazeera America. What are we to make of this? Someone asked me that question and this was my reply.
Our friend Al Gore sold his channel to the Qataris because it was a complete bust. AL JAZEERA promises few commercials. How can they do this? Because it will be totally funded by the emir of Qatar just like the al Jazeera of the Arab world. They have unlimited bucks and will buy the best technicians and face people available. It will make our networks look amateurish. It will be propagandistic but more subtle than the Arabic or English international version. Our US Arabic network al Hurra cannot compete . Their best people were bought by Al Jazeera. Will it have a listenership.? Sure will. Academics will force their students to to watch it, anti – semites will love it, and people who are tired of the celebrity driven US networks will watch it. It will have much more international news. Primarily it will compete against PBS and BBC America. It will be better in some respects. In general the lefties who hate Israel and dislike America ( and think of themselves too intelligent to watch FOX news) will be devoted listeners. The great USA unwashed, however, will continue to follow Kim Kardashian ( unless she is brought in to be an anchor). ATT has refused to carry it but I suspect that the money floated out there will be too much for smaller servers/carriers to resist.
Daniel Pipes make a great point in his recent post to wit: Qatar,, … a pimple on the face of the earth….. has more influence than the United States in the Arab world. We can thanks our feckless President for this humiliation.
Pipes wrote…..
Qatar (with a national population of 225,000) has an arguably greater impact on current events than the 1,400-times-larger United States (population: 314 million). Note how Obama these days takes a back seat to the emirs of Doha: They take the lead supplying arms to the Libyan rebels, he follows. They actively help the rebels in Syria, he dithers. They provide billions to the new leadership in Egypt, he stumbles over himself. They unreservedly back Hamas in Gaza, he pursues delusions of an Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” Toward this end, the U.S. secretary of state made six trips in four months to Israel and the Palestinian territories in pursuit of a diplomatic initiative that almost no one believes will end the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Holder or cyber rats at NSA…you following this?
