THE WHOLE PROBLEM IS NEWSWEEK, DIDN'T YOU KNOW

First Lady's Sesame Street Adventure
By Jefferson Morleywashingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, May 23, 2005; 5:54 PM

The world says "Guantanamo," and the Bush administration replies "Sesame Street."

The world says "Guantanamo," and the Bush administration replies "Sesame Street."

Laura Bush's photo opportunity Monday with a puppet from the Egyptian version of the children's television program was a snapshot from the island of American innocence in a sea of Muslim hostility.

The first lady's six-day trip to the Middle East was, in her husband's words, intended to "help advance the freedom agenda" in the region. But few English-language online commentators in the Islamic world are connecting the travels of the president's wife with his calls for political reform in the region's many dictatorships and monarchies.

Her praise of Egypt's longtime president President Hosni Mubarak and his "bold and wise" plan to slightly liberalize the country's political system was rejected by secular and Islamic opposition leaders, according to Reuters.

Instead, her trip has attracted hecklers and indifferent press coverage amid a tsunami of critical commentary about the U.S. media and Bush administration policy toward the Muslim world.

The heckling incidents on Sunday drew widespread coverage with Aljazeera.net and the Saudi Gazette emphasizing the shouts of Muslim protesters during her visit to a mosque in Jerusalem. Even the usually pro-Bush Daily Telegraph in London said the goodwill trip had "turned sour."

Bush said she wasn't bothered by the demonstrators but they got a lot more coverage than her speech in Jordan advocating for women's rights -- it drew approving commentary from the Khaleej Times in the United Arab Emirates but few others. The Jordan Times offered only a brief story about her visit to a school in Jordan.

The story about Newsweek's retracted allegations of Koran desecration is attracting much more attention than the first lady's educational efforts. In the United States, the story has prompted the administration to lash out at the supposed liberal news media for undermining the U.S. image abroad while news outlets wonder if this latest episode will further tarnish their reputation.

But overseas, the story and retraction alike are provoking scorn for both the U.S. government and the media.

In Iraq, columnist Waleed Zubaidi writing in the Baghdad daily Azzaman said that "it is really sad and offensive to see the Bush team blaming Newsweek for why Muslims hate the United States."

The "Bush administration's criticism of Newsweek is a deliberate attempt to blame the U.S. media for its military failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan," he wrote.>>>continued

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/02/24/AR2005040701426.html