Jack's Newswatch

Actually, it’s his grandson, but aside from that little detail the headline has it all.  As you know, I enjoy political satire more than most, but I would never have dared to invent this story, which at once mocks lawyers, journalists, and the remarkable folks over at al Reuters.

So here’s Comrade Stalin’s grandson,  Mr. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, who is outraged that anybody could write a story saying that his grandforther “had ordered the killings of Soviet citizens.”  He’s asking for $300,000 from the newspaper Novaya Gazeta and some additional damages from the offending author.  Dzugashvili has found the attorney of his dreams, a Stalinist by the name of Leonid Zhura who is shocked and enraged by the article, which, by the way, was based  on declassified Kremlin documents.

Al Reuters provides a series of quotations from Zhura that are worthy of Mel Brooks’ finest spoofs of the Fuhrer:

“Half a century of lies have been poured over Stalin’s reputation and he cannot defend himself from the grave so this case is essential to put the record straight…We want to rehabilitate Stalin.  He turned populations into peoples, he presided over a golden era in literature and the arts, he was a real leader…”  And Zhura was particularly enraged by the claim that “the secret police committed grave crimes against their own people.”

To which al Reuters adds its own deep thoughts, suitably even-handed for that icon of political correctness:

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