Ben Hubbard and his stereotype of covering the Middle East

Look at this statement by Ben Hubbard:  "I am a New York Times correspondent in the Middle East, where I write more about coups and car bombs than about corporate mergers." He is trying to be both funny and interesting and fails at both.  He thinks that he is covering the Middle East of the 1960s.  But when did you cover a coup? When was the last coup you covered? Did you cover any coup in your life, ever (did he even cover that one coup in many years by Sisi in Egypt)?  Secondly: is it nice how he think all the Middle East is basically car bombs and corporate mergers? People are ignorant of the Middle East in the West because you have those kind of correspondents--and this one prides himself that he studied Arabic (although I would like to examine him on his Arabic).