Is Newsweek even trying anymore?

Arlene Getz wants to know where the outrage is regarding the NSA story. The answer: in newsrooms across America and few other places. She goes off on a ridiculous parallel between the U.S. and S. Africa that would embarrass any person living north of the Bush Fever Line:

Back in the 1980s, when I was living in Johannesburg and reporting on apartheid
South Africa, a white neighbor proffered a tasteless confession. She was "quite
relieved," she told me, that new media restrictions prohibited our reporting on
government repression. No matter that Pretoria was detaining tens of thousands
of people without real evidence of wrongdoing. No matter that many of them,
including children, were being tortured—sometimes to death. No matter that
government hit squads were killing political opponents. No matter that police
were shooting into crowds of black civilians protesting against their
disenfranchisement. "It's so nice," confided my neighbor, "not to open the
papers and read all that bad news."

Yes, the comparisons are obvious, aren’t they? But the manure doesn’t stop there. Getz describes Desmond Tutu’s reaction – not to the spy story, but to the 2004 election?

Tutu recalled teaching in Jacksonville, Fla., when Bush won re-election in 2004.
"I was shocked," he said, "because I had naively believed all these many years
that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there
that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White
House was saying, then they attacked you.

I know I’ve been living in the Bush bubble, but what is the Tutu talking about and what does the 2004 election have to do with anything?