On a cold March evening in Manhattan, Ayman Mohyeldin rode in the back of a black Lincoln Town Car on his way to an appearance on The Colbert Report. Mohyeldin (pronounced moh-hee-deen) is the Cairo correspondent for Al Jazeera English, which helps explain two things: (1) accustomed to the temperate winters of the Triumphant City along the lazy Nile, he was sorely underdressed for the windy stabs of Manhattan, and (2) after his network’s critically acclaimed coverage of the Egyptian uprising, he was in town to take his star turn on Stephen Colbert’s hot seat, constituting what promised to be a pop-cultural coming-out for Al Jazeera in the United States.

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