In the annals of "strange bedfellow" political encounters, the recent broadcast in which WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange interviewed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stands out as a remarkable episode. After all, who would have expected to see Assange -- the master hacker, iconoclastic atheist and publicity-loving poster child for technological assaults on orthodoxy -- crossing paths with Nasrallah -- the reclusive leader, ancient-garb wearer and head of a theocratic organization based on centuries-old scriptures?
On closer examination, however, the debut episode of Assange's show, "The World Tomorrow," on the Kremlin-funded RT network, which featured Nasrallah as its first guest, is less surprising. The two enormously charismatic men share parallel challenges in their radically different lives. And their careers, although sharply different, have in common a disdain for much of the Western establishment.
In fact, Assange's decision to interview Nasrallah, and Nasrallah's choice of Assange for his first television interview in half a decade, makes a lot of sense. Both men knew it was a recipe certain to command attention. And both men had some urgent image-mending to do.