While the long-awaited return of a physical audience to Question Time was underwhelming, we did at least get a decent bust-up between Rory Stewart and Mehdi Hasan. With Hasan backing Biden’s move, Rory laid into the MSNBC presenter with so much anger he later apologised on Twitter for the outburst.
Apologies for losing my cool on …@bbcquestiontime But we have stop “either it was a disaster or it was a triumph”. You can be a strong critic of the surge in Afghanistan + still accept how much was achieved and how much we have needlessly thrown away. https://t.co/ac8drnNOOg
— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) August 18, 2021
After Rory resorted to asking Hasan when he last visited Kabul, he spat back “When you were in Afghanistan Rory, did you go talk to the families of the people we killed?” Shame there wasn’t a proper audience to witness the bust up…
Mehdi with some typically thoughtful and nuanced insight on his return to UK TV screens…
Over the last few months Guido has noticed that Mehdi Hasan, working for Al Jazeera in Washington D.C., has been tweeting more about UK affairs than perhaps a D.C. based presenter for a news channel with global pretensions would be expected. Those speculating as to whether or not he still has a job following the announced closure of Al Jazeera America should bear in mind that he works for the barely watched English language channel rather than the unwatched American channel, so technically a different employer. Which is just as well as all jobs at Al Jazeera America are terminated as of April.
The Qatar-backed channel has had the plug on its losses pulled (estimated to be $2 billion) as energy prices plummet and the Qataris get real. Does this mean Mehdi is coming back to UK shores? Is there perhaps a vacancy at Press TV now Corbyn is no longer hosting shows for Tehran’s propaganda channel? No doubt the prolific twanker will let us know via Twitter…
“I’m fed up with the hypocrisy of the free speech fundamentalists,” says Mehdi Hasan as he finally gives his two cents on the Paris terror attack. He asks: “Has your publication, for example, run cartoons mocking the Holocaust? No? How about caricatures of the 9/11 victims falling from the twin towers? I didn’t think so (and I am glad it hasn’t).”
Actually, Mehdi, US cartoons constantly make jokes about 9/11, and pretty mainstream, much-loved ones too. Here are just three such gags from Family Guy:
And look, a “cartoon mocking the Holocaust”:
And yet no one reached for their Kalashnikov…
Terrible news: Mehdi is leaving Al-HuffPo to join Al-Jazeera in DC. After the letter to Mr Dacre didn’t pay off, it looks like the one to AJ did. “Dear Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani”…
Joking apart, we’ll miss you Mehdi. Congratulations.
UPDATE:
Al Jazeera America averaged 17,000 viewers during prime time since the beginning of 2014 according to Nielsen. Not so big in America.
— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) December 18, 2014
For a sense of perspective Al Jazeera America has 1% of the audience that Fox News does…
