Truth and Humor

Both honest reporting and honest comedians subvert oppression. In October, someone assassinated Anna Politkovskaya because she ferreted out the truth. As Manan Ahmed notes Iraqi Comedian Walid Hassan was killed on Monday, almost certainly by someone who values power over freedom of thought: a would-be emperor who has no clothes.

Let us mourn our loss, be thankful for their acts, and hope that the examples of their lives is more powerful than the examples of their deaths, as intended by their killers.