Denial Isn't Just a River in Egypt: Time Magazine Treats New Egyptian Dictator Morsi to Softball Interview

As we at NewsBusters have noted, the media's coverage of Mohammed Morsi's self-appointment as virtual dictator in Egypt has been dreadful. Surely TIME magazine would be a little more hard-hitting, right?

Wrong. Despite having the benefit of three reporters on the byline -- Richard Stengel, Bobby Ghosh and Karl Vick --  none of those men posed a really hard-hitting question and all of them let Morsi drone on with filibuster-length answers that dominated the interview. Below the page break you'll find the agenda of questions asked (emphases mine) -- the first one is an incredibly dopey non-question -- and you can read the TIME transcript here:

• TIME: You’re on the world stage now.
• What was it like to deal with president Obama during the Gaza cease-fire?
• Is the Muslim Brotherhood in fact a democratic organization?
• Last week’s decree created a lot of controversy. If you had it to do over again, would you handle it differently? Revise it?
• This year, 2012, was a big year, a lot happened. Many hail you as a statesman, others warn you’re a new pharaoh.
• Is there enough of a buy-in from the society at large on the constitution?
• But what about the political environment around it? Don’t events of the last week indicate a society pulling part rather than coming together around it?

As David Harsanyi of Human Events tweeted, "i was surprised Time didn't ask morsi: tahini or humus?" Indeed.