Malala Yousafzai captivates world media with powerful story

You know how sometimes a story comes along that just kicks your ego right in the daddy parts and makes your accomplishments look feeble? This is one of those, but in this case my feelings and I don’t matter, because the story of Malala Yousafzai is super good for the world.

If you don’t know already, Malala has been captivating the world media by being more adorable than a sack of kittens and more badass than another sack full of Rambos, at only sixteen years of age. Her story all started with the British, or more specifically, their broadcasting corporations. When Malala was eleven, the BBC secretly taped her to cover the Taliban’s actions and war-mongering in her hometown of Swat Valley in Pakistan (Jesus, even her home has a badass name). Things started to go sideways when the Taliban declared that girls wouldn’t be getting any more education, and then put a period on that sentence by blowing up a few hundred schools.

Where anybody else would have either cowered in fear, or more likely proclaimed, “No school forever? Awesome!” Malala started publicly denouncing the Taliban, because she loves her some learning and explosions clearly just make her giggle cutely. By the time she was fourteen, she’d built up an awesome rep as an activist for girl’s education, and gotten her school reopened. And that was the Taliban’s red line, apparently.

Last year in October, a gunman stopped a bus carrying Malala and several other students and demanded to know where she was. Upon finding out, he shot her in the head. As Malala was lying on a surgical table, barely clutching at life, the Taliban trumpeted their deed to the world, thinking they’d really stuck it to the world and common sense.

Only, Malala had a few more middle fingers to give back, because she survived, and everybody not in the Taliban rallied around her as a symbolic hero and verbally crapped on the Taliban. In the wake of the shooting, Pakistan passed a bill that guaranteed free education to its children, and vowed to make sure it was enforced.

Malala herself has relocated to London, and recently came back into the news with her new book “I Am Malala,” and she’s on a mission to amaze all who comes into contact with her  as well as yank their heartstrings like she’s playing tug of war with puppy videos. Even more amazingly, the shooting seems to have made her that much more badass, like the Punisher, but pacifist. When she got to meet President Barack Obama, she skipped right past the small talk and confronted him on drone strikes, saying he was unintentionally supporting terrorism.

Then she gave a quote to NPR that would have made Michael Corleone smile cryptically in approval: “I have already seen death and I know that death is supporting me in my cause of education. Death does not want to kill me.” Brrr. Then before she scares everyone too much, she goes to talk to Jon Stewart, and amazes him enough to ask her if he can adopt her. Bawwww. Meanwhile, the Taliban still have a price on her head, but I’m pretty sure that it’s degenerated into a long game of: “I’m not doing it, you do it,” repeated ad infinitum.

Now, you might be wondering what you can do to ensure the continuing reign of Malala (and also, that whole education for girls thing). Well, you could buy her book, which pays her royalties that she will probably use to fund a fleet of school tanks for Palestinian schools, or donate to the Malala Fund, her eponymous charity, even if you can’t match Angelina Jolie’s $200,000 donation ( a secret apology for “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” I think).

Besides those two things though, there’s not really much to be done except to bask in the awesome. Run free and wide Malala, leaving education in your wake.