Gee, ya think?

Michael Rubin asks, with an evidently straight face:

I won’t get into the substance of Obama’s comments—others are doing that across the web—but I am curious whether the choice of al-Arabiya signals the administration’s abandonment of the U.S.-funded al-Hurra satellite channel. Al-Arabiya is the second-most popular channel in the Arabic-speaking Middle East (after al-Jazeera), so audience reach was not the only factor Obama’s handlers considered when determining on which Arabic satellite station he should appear.

Setting aside the fact that people only watch it when their cats accidentally step on their remote controls, al-Hurra is — like the administration that sponsored it — a sump of incompetence that can’t even maintain a consistently pro-American line of propaganda. Nevertheless, I can’t imagine why the incoming administration wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to validate five years of failed media strategy by appearing on a network that symbolizes its predecessor’s total incapacity to take people in the Middle East seriously.

…Marc Lynch has more…