Pakistan (continued)

The radio reported this morning that General Musharraf is leaving Pakistan's newspapers alone while cracking down on television to enforce his emergency rule. His policy appears to be based on a cynical calculation that most Pakistani people are illiterate and therefore won't pay attention to the press. He might think differently if people started taking their newspapers to the masses and reading them aloud, but maybe the general knows something about class relationships in his country that I don't.

Again, this is an area where the Bush Administration might offer Musharraf some advice. He has the right idea about newspapers, they might tell him, but otherwise his approach is crude. He doesn't censor newspapers because his people don't read. That's fine. In America, the Bushies could argue, we don't censor any media -- we're not worried about what the media say because our people don't think.