Cairo

Continuing the long twilight struggle to document President Obama’s chameleon-like ability to transmogrify into different cultures and religions simply by showing them respect — as some would have it — Adam Serwer catches the latest disgrace. “Having a meeting with the Holy Father is a great honor and something that I’m very much looking forward [...]

This is curious: twice in two weeks Politico has given rather sensational headlines to stories, then changed them later in the day. The original headline for Mike Allen’s preview of the president’s Cairo speech, which has been preserved in a syndicated version:
Obama walks Muslim minefield
The headline that replaced this later in the day:
Obama faces Mideast [...]

When President Obama gave his “Muslim speech” in Cairo, the Drudge Report headlined it “6,000 words.” When former Vice President Cheney responded to the president’s speech on Guantanamo Bay and torture, he opened with a joke about how long it was (”In the House, we have the five minute rule.”)
The first speech was 55 minutes [...]

I guess I see what Washington Times mainstay Wes Pruden is trying to say here, but there could be a less Cecil Rhodes-ian way of expressing it.
Mr. Obama’s revelation of his “inner Muslim” in Cairo reveals much about who he is. He is our first president without an instinctive appreciation of the culture, history, tradition, [...]

M.J. Rosenberg thinks the speech brought out eight distinct messages, with one of them being “We are committed to Israel and to Palestine.” Adam Serwer takes the same section on Palestinian moral obligations that also caught my attention and writes:
A white president could say this. But it really wouldn’t have as much meaning. The President [...]

As prepared for delivery:
I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt’s advancement. Together, [...]

I don’t remotely have enough knowledge about the forthcoming Iranian presidential election — and after so many misforecast assessments over so many years, I’m dubious that anyone here in the United States really does — but I would really like every word of this Andrew Sullivan post to be true.
Ahmadinejad has discredited himself in the [...]

President Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the first leg of of his outreach to what-we-maybe-shouldn’t-call-the Muslim world and, unsurprisingly, Osama bin Laden has released his latest mixtape screed against Obama and the United States more broadly. This time, to blunt the message of reconciliation and respect that Obama intends to send in his [...]

The New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama is “considering making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office,” possibly in Cairo.
As Politico’s Ben Smith points out, this would possibly fulfill an obscure primary campaign pledge to hold a summit with Muslim countries, made during an [...]