Tee and Hegazy

Guard the children. Someone said, “the trouble with having an open mind is that people will insist on coming along to put things in it.”

But at the least, Mr Tee is consistent, if not amusing. He always entertained, original, unscripted, and from the soul. A candidate for Memri, he abandoned a doctrine that embodies dharma (of which he still looks the part) for one that personifies drama. If his eruptions do not make The Onion, Jihad Watch usually picks up the slack, and we can all scapegoat Malay Mail for putting Malaysia on the map again.

He has a counterpart in Egypt – Mr Hegazy – a fiery cleric who found himself on the other side of Sisi’s political fence. Similarly blustered, Mr Hegazy starts slow and reaches a crescendo that has everyone in stitches. In his ‘boycott Starbucks’ campaign, his beef was that Esther of Persia is depicted on Howard’s logo, claiming, albeit accurately, that the ‘Jewish woman’ of the Purim fame was instrumental in influencing her husband, who sponsored the first Zionist movement to rebuild Solomon’s temple, but ignoring the historical amnesia that it happened a millennium before Islam.

Fear fuels comedy. When arrested fleeing the Morsi purge, Hegazy gave a new bent to the term ‘drama queen.’ He was found in a van, all shaved and nicely dressed as a woman. Jailed by Sisi for incitement, to the chagrin of his fans, he has held his tongue since his release. Given that his cross-dressing stint is seen as a low point of his career, we pray such a predicament does not befall Mr Tee because both are kindred spirits who share a common ‘evil-lurking-under-the-bed’ comic strain that keeps Memri on its toes and happy people at large, pleasantly distracted.

Words, Tommy Peters