Source: The Daily Beast
by David Rothkopf
“There is an old Soviet joke that I hear repeated so often these days that I suspect many people just think it came fresh off from some late-night comedy monologue In the joke, a man walks by a newspaper stand every day. Each day, he buys a copy of the newspaper — in the original telling, Pravda. He scans the front page and then tosses the paper into the trash. After this has gone on for a while, the newsstand guy asks, ‘You always look at just the front of the newspaper but never inside. What’s up with that?’ ‘I’m looking for an obituary,’ replies the man. ‘An obituary? But all those are in the back of the paper …’ ‘No,’ says the man, ‘The one I’m looking for will be on page one.’ The joke is popular these days because it resonates with an uncomfortable element in our current national conversation.” (08/28/25)