Sacha Baron Cohen - The Real Borat - Finally Speaks

The Rolling Stone ^ | 11/16/06 | NEIL STRAUSS

[Lizavetta]

But the America that Borat discovers on his cross-country trek here -- rife with homophobia, xenophobia, racism, classism and anti-Semitism -- is all too real.

Rife? So you go looking for these types of people, find them, and then conclude that America is "rife" with them? Isn't that like going to Utah and concluding that America is "rife" with Mormonism?

[EyeGuy]

I believe you've nailed this condescending, arrogant secular jew's hide to the wall.

Nice job.

[untenured]

In actuality, it turns out that Borat is a far more damning critique of America than it is of Kazakhstan.

Or a critique of whatever scenes the movie-makers could cherry-pick to make the movie as funny as possible. One wonders what was left on the cutting-room floor because Americans behaved perfectly decently (as, frankly, they often did even in the scenes that made it into the movie when Borat put them in an impossible position).

Remember too that all these millions of people going to see the movie are Americans who are willing to laugh at themselves, a fairly rare quality.

[Eurotwit]

See Cohen as Ali G make fun of some British treehuggers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ9o1KHi-mY

[JerseyHighlander]

Sorry, have you seen his first movie? Entire movie devouted to utterly destroying the chav and hiphop culture (and various tauntings of the toff culture) in the UK.

[word_warrior_bob]

Don't hold your breath, he's a left winger. Doesn't have the ba!!s to mock muslims.

[Cuttnhorse]

I haven't seen the movie, yet, but caught him last week on Leno and he was a crack up. Haven't laughed so hard at Leno in a looong time. He had Borat on with Martha Stuart and she made a fool of herself...instead of laughing at the guy she came across as the uptight biddy that she is.

[ConservativeMan55]

bttt

[Eurotwit]

Here is a scene that did not make the final cut. He was trying to get a dog from a dog shelter so that he could use it to defend himself from jews...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph15ewarM3Q

[gaijin]

Martha Stewart's politics are hard left so I don't particularly care, but the reason why Cohen (and many lefties) go for the blue-on-blue Martha Stewart kill is cuz she does the unforgivable:

She makes a career of teaching women to do things that reinforce their WOMANLINESS.

[Natural Law]

"What would the reaction be if an American went to England, found a few examples of English Jews who would reinforce the worst stereotypes of Jews imaginable, and deceived and then mocked them on camera in a way that was genuinely witty and funny?"

Just get the stick out of your butt and laugh, he really is very, very funny.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Remember too that all these millions of people going to see the movie are Americans who are willing to laugh at themselves, a fairly rare quality

There will also be tens of millions of people in Europe, Asia and elsewhere who will see this movie and will have reinforced to them the same biased anti-American themes they hear constantly in their mainstream media.

I'm not sure people who haven't spent an extensive amount of time abroad interacting with local people really understand the image problem the United States has around the world, especially in Europe, and to what extent the entertainment industry is responsible for these ugly anti-American prejudices through movies, television programs, music, etc.

[Sue Perkick]

The frat boys were from Carowhina? BWAAAAAAAAAAAH! I may have to see it afterall. LOL.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Just get the stick out of your butt and laugh, he really is very, very funny.

If you weren't so quick to be an insulting a-hole you would have read in my comments that I concede that he is funny, in fact at times hilarious.

I used to listen to Howard Stern but realized the fact that he can at times be very funny doesn't excuse the degeneracy.

[babble-on]

they;re from South Carolina actually.

[Caesar Soze]

I agree. But Cohen seems to find jackasses in America ... and nowhere else. Not even his native Britain.

He's found jackasses in Britain. The Cambridge segment is probably the best, or maybe the crew segment, but there's a few others.

[Eurotwit]

You are probably right.

I have watched many of his vidoes on youtube, and many comments share that exact theme: haha, Americans are stupid, ignorant, bigoted etc. etc.

[elc]

Spurlock is the idiot who ate McDonald's for 30 days and documented it.

[meowmeow]

But the America that Borat discovers on his cross-country trek here -- rife with homophobia, xenophobia, racism, classism and anti-Semitism -- is all too real.

If I really think hard, I can come up with about 5 people that I've known at some point in my life who were one or more of the above - and they were all major @ssholes. Somehow 5 out of the hundreds of people I've ever known isn't exactly "rife."

[jpl]

His humor strikes me as being somewhat lighthearted and not at all angry or meanspirited.

We should be self-confident enough to be able to laugh at ourselves from time to time. To me he seems kind of like the new Andy Kaufman.