Courtesy of Mohamed Omar
After three extended space heater commercials, two creepy animated music videos and a further two failed attempts of running the roll that yielded no audio, Tawfiq Okasha finally graced our living room screens again.
Yes, people, the legend is back. This time with more revelations, expert analysis and of course, a less than subtle reminder that he is always right. Even when he is not.
It was Okasha’s first appearance since July when the government shut down his channel, Al Fara’een. Although a court reversed the decision, Al Fara’een was in major debt and remained closed.
He was also entangled in several court cases ranging from an unpaid divorce settlement, defamation of Khaled Said’s mother and insulting President Mohamed Morsy. He was sentenced for four months in prison but remains free as he appeals the verdict.
Okasha ensured we remained aware of his legal plights as sad music accompanied emotional montages of him standing trial behind bars prefaced going to, and coming back, from a half hour-long commercial break.
Nevertheless, the hero returns. This time on a little known channel, Time Drama, on which Okasha reportedly had to pay for his own spot. Time Drama seized the opportunity and ensured everything from male enhancement commercials featuring cartoon female private parts to “Moon Light” weight loss tea and cream were advertised. A lot.
Further lending credibility to my theory that he puts on an act and is in fact cunningly intelligent, Okasha started us off – in perfect classical Arabic – with an opening statement that was a hybrid of an explanation and a collection of history’s worst apologies.
“I have attacked many of Egypt’s journalists on my show. Perhaps I was too critical, but they have also erred, they did not properly research the topics they presented,” he said.
Okasha then went on to list many such journalists and media presenters. He said they were all on the same boat now that the Muslim Brotherhood was attacking media freedoms.
“I attacked them, but I attacked them for Egypt,” Okasha assured the journalists.
He went on to bury the hatchet with many political figures he traditionally opposed. Okasha assured us that his wife was friends with Popular Current leader Hamdeen Sabahy’s wife, a fact he recently discovered.
Even his sworn enemy Mohamed ElBaradei was offered an olive branch. Previously critical of the Nobel laureate for failing to know village flea market prices and a serious lack of duck feeding skills, Okasha assured the opposition leader that he then attacked him in defence of poor Egyptians and now wished to ally with him for the same reason.
There was a list of thanks to people who probably received them very uncomfortably such as businessmen Naguib Sawiris and Ahmed Bahgat. Even Bassem Youssef received a passive aggressive apology.
Introductions out of the way, Okasha launched into a tirade against the Muslim Brotherhood whom he says are fulfilling the United States’ plan for colonising Egypt without spending a single dollar.
Barack Obama hates Benjamin Netanyahu, you see, and as such he instigated the recent Gaza conflict in order to allow Morsy to look good. This is all because Bibi backed Mitt Romney in the presidential elections.
Looking the hero, Morsy was then encouraged to release his constitutional decree with an American blessing so that Egypt would spiral into chaos and be ripe for the taking. Who knew all this? General Omar Suleiman, former vice president.
Suleiman was assimilated by the Americans through an injection that blocked his “starchy glands” while receiving treatment for an illness in a country Okasha refused to name.
Okasha will be appearing on Time Drama at 9pm three times a week on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. His protégé Hayat El-Derdeery will join him once or twice a week. Watch him because everything else now is depressing.
