Comedian Bassem Youssef. (Credit: Photo reproduced with permission of the artist)
He no longer belongs to one country, but he has a microphone. And that is all he needs to confront the world with its contradictions. Bassem Youssef, a former doctor turned satirist, has watched the convulsions of the Arab world for the past 11 years from “the belly of the beast,” as he puts it, — the United States — turning his exile into a platform for resistance.From Cairo to Los Angeles, Egypt’s most famous comic of his generation scrutinizes the powerful with the precision of someone who has nothing left to lose, and the clarity of someone who has seen it all. In a world saturated with anxiety and images, humor may be the last form of free thought."I'm just a comedian, not an activist," he says in a video interview with L’Orient-Le Jour. His modesty is almost misleading. Behind that smile is one of the Arab world’s...
He no longer belongs to one country, but he has a microphone. And that is all he needs to confront the world with its contradictions. Bassem Youssef, a former doctor turned satirist, has watched the convulsions of the Arab world for the past 11 years from “the belly of the beast,” as he puts it, — the United States — turning his exile into a platform for resistance.From Cairo to Los Angeles, Egypt’s most famous comic of his generation scrutinizes the powerful with the precision of someone who has nothing left to lose, and the clarity of someone who has seen it all. In a world saturated with anxiety and images, humor may be the last form of free thought."I'm just a comedian, not an activist," he says in a video interview with L’Orient-Le Jour. His modesty is almost misleading. Behind that smile is one of the Arab...
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