Coup Coup Catch You?
Ethan is once again knowledgeable and provocative, this time about what it takes for a coup to get some attention in this country. He compares the media’s interest in Honduras’ institutional coup (as a guy called it last night on The News Hour) with the almost complete ignoring of various coups in Africa.
Ethan concludes (but read the whole thing):
So why does Honduras get the Iran treatment, while Niger is ignored like Madagascar? Proximity? Strategic importance? (though Niger’s got massive uranium reserves – you remember yellowcake, right?) It’s not population – Niger’s roughly twice the size of Honduras. Expectation? Perhaps we’re sufficiently accustomed to African coups (Madagascar, Mauritania and Guinea in the past year) that Niger’s not a surprise.
Or perhaps all the pundits are still trying to figure out which one’s Nigeria and which one’s Niger…
Ethan conspicuously leaves out racism — the soft racism (as that ol’ phrase President George W. Bush once put it) of not knowing, not caring, and not bothering to develop a narrative.
(By the way, be sure to click on the link in the quote from Ethan. It leads to one of The Onion’s funniest videos ever.)
ahahahh, the onion
I would say iran would be able to change the mood of the planet
not just their own
may be that s the real difference
honduras ?
I think the Niger coup would have gotten more attention if it could be argued that Hugo Chavez was extending his influence into Africa. Plus, it was only 20-some years ago that Central America dominated U.S. foreign policy. So some of us have a familiarity with Tegucigalpa, which was our staging ground for the Contra army. A third reason: Central Americans are more prominent on the U.S. scene.