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| Bassem Youssef and El-Bernameg |
A flood of questions started after the announcement to suspend Bassem Youssef’s episode of his TV show El-Bernameg, and these questions will continue until the reason for the suspension is uncovered.
Although state officials have washed their hands of the decision to suspend the TV show, this is not enough. Youssef’s fans will never believe that the reason for suspension is only two minutes within the episode, criticizing his host channel CBC.
Certainly, people won’t give their opinion until they watch the full episode; then they will be able to form a logical and clear opinion about it, and also be capable to suggest potential answers to the posed questions.
And for now, the reality is that Youssef’s fans were unexpectedly shocked on Friday, a minute before the time of his episode on CBC channel, when Khairi Ramadan, host presenter of ‘Momken’ TV show, said, “CBC channel saw that the content presented in Youssef’s episode violates what was mentioned in the channel’s statement on Saturday,” after the wave of criticism to the previous episode.
The channel’s statement said the producer and presenter of El Bernameg refused to follow the channel’s policy, and said that there are financial disputes between both sides due to insistence of Youssef’s team to change some terms of the contract.
After the statement, Youssef’s fans were distracted from the real reason of suspending an episode of the most famous Arab satirical TV show.
The suspension comes only 3 days before deposed President Mohamed Morsi’s trial, and the team of El Bernameg has played a main role in revealing the internal and foreign violations during his year in office.
Youssef’s opponents refused to watch the last aired episode and saw that Youssef exceeded limits concerning the channel’s policy, prompting the show’s team to reveal some details of the banned episode: particularly, the appearance of artist Tamer Hagres, whose skin color Youssef mocked when they played out a comic scene at the beginning of this episode.
The banned episode included Youssef’s reaction to the channel’s statement, which accused him of using sexual suggestions. He said the TV show is for only adults since the beginning, adding that the channel itself broadcasted the TV series “Hekayet Hayah”, or “Hayah’s story” starring Ghada Abdel Raziq during Ramadan, which was full of sexual suggestions, but in fact they didn’t ban any of its episodes.
Bassem Youssef also posed a question about the channel’s consideration of “National constants” which assumes that Youssef had exceeded limits while the channel didn’t last long in boycotting the Turkish drama.
Furthermore, the banned episode also included an emphasis on the absence of professional in the Egyptian and Arab media, by spotting many illogical statements made by some journalists like Mostafa Bakry, Ahmed Moussa, and Mohamed el- Gheity, who claimed deposed President Morsi’s voracity about food without proving the credibility of this information.
Bassem Youssef allocated the second part of the episode to celebrate in his own way Al Jazeera satellite channel’s seventh birthday, where he pointed out some of the willful mistakes made by the Qatari channel.
In the third part of the episode, Bassem Youssef poke about his readiness to stop the TV show if he were told that it is would threaten Egypt’s national security, and said that that Egypt is not so weak to be threatened by a satirical TV show.
