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"I was surprised, because I always had faith in the audience that they would realize that this was a fictitious country and the mere purpose of it was to allow people to bring out their own prejudices. And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it was a country that no one had heard anything about

Very parochial. Just because Cohen hasn't heard anything about Kazakhstan doesn't mean the rest of the world hasn't. If he was trying for a fictitious country, he should have used a fictitious name. Obviously he never even considered what the reaction of the people of Kazakhstan to his misrepresentations might be - obviously he never considered anything about them. Incredibly elitist attitude.

In actuality, it turns out that Borat is a far more damning critique of America than it is of Kazakhstan. The jokes that Baron Cohen mentions above -- and all the rest about beating gypsies, throwing Jews down wells, exporting pubic hair and making monkey porn -- are clearly parody. 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.

Try hard enough and you'll find homophobia, xenophobia, racism, classism, and anti-Semitism everywhere. Lord knows you won't have to try as hard in England as you will in most of the US. The idea of someone from the UK presuming to mock Americans for classism and anti-Semitism is preposterous. How many fake interviews and takes did it get to find the people who eventually made the final cut? More than it would have taken anywhere in Western Europe.