Free Republic

Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry threatened legal action on Monday against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who wins laughs by portraying the central Asian state as a country populated by drunks who enjoy cow-punching as a sport. Baron Cohen, who portrays a spoof Kazakh television presenter Borat in his "Da Ali G Show", has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan, the world's ninth largest country yet still little known to many in the West. Baron Cohen appears to have drawn official Kazakh ire after he hosted the annual MTV Europe Music Awards show in Lisbon earlier this month as Borat, who arrived in an Air...

Michael Collins' chronicle of South-East London looks for the roots of today's chav-bashing. The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working ClassMichael Collins Granta Books, 2004.South-East London has never enjoyed a good press. Guidebooks treat it as an afterthought, an appendix to the real business elsewhere in the capital. Historical Greenwich is mentioned, of course, and a handful of other tourist-friendly sights, but that's your lot. The days when the South Bank theatres were surrounded by syphilitic brothels and murderous backstreets are long gone, yet the stigma persists. This corner of the capital remains a world apart. In...

The director of Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film has reportedly quit after a run-in with the comic. The row is thought to have been sparked after the Ali G creator nearly sparked a riot at a rodeo earlier this month.

ALI G, a k a Sasha Baron Cohen , has been plying his satirical trade in New York with mixed results. In character as Kazakhstan-born journalist "Borat," one of his personas on "Da Ali G Show," the British comic was on Park Avenue Sunday afternoon with a big map of the city turned upside down. He approached p.r. man Ronn Torossian and his wife and asked: "Where is Lexington Avenue? Is that where the Jews are?" Sadly, Torossian and 90 percent of the other New Yorkers he approached identified Cohen immediately. Luckily for us, some tourists were caught in his...

Marines learn how to fight for Allah Wait a minute. I thought we were supposed to believe that the jihadists were twisting the Qur'an. And now the American marines are studying the Qur'an in order to think like jihadists? What does that tell us? From the Times Online, with thanks to J. Lynch: AMERICAN marines and military intelligence analysts are studying the tactics of insurgents in Iraq — staging mock hostage takings, roadside bombings and suicide missions, as well as studying the Koran, praying to Allah and learning to think like jihadists. The Pentagon is struggling to adapt to an...

Borat does this bit where he's talking to a random person and starts describing aspects of a stereotypical Jew. He gestures a big nose, mentions "they hev a lot of money", and waits to see if the person correctly identifies who he's talking about. Usually, the mark gets it right. Now, does this demonstrate the bigotry of the person and/or Americans in general, as is implied by the satirical nature of the interview? I don't think so. It simply demonstrates that the person is aware of the stereotype, not necessarily that he agrees with it. Most Americans tend to be...

August 23, 2004 -- HBO's hottest comic, Sacha Baron Cohen — best known as the goofy rapper Ali G. — is in hot water for a gag-song he sang on TV that groups are calling anti-Semitic. The British version of the FCC and the U.K.'s Jewish Board of Deputies are investigating Cohen for a phony Country-Western song called "Throw the Jew Down the Well" that he performed at a rural bar in Arizona for his show. In the U.S., the sketch has also drawn fire from the Anti-Defamation League. Cohen, who is Jewish, sang the song under the guise of...

August 25, 2004 -- ATTENTION assistants of high-profile network news stars: You and your bosses are simple prey for Sacha Baron Cohen — better known as goofy British rapper/TV host Ali G. The latest newsman to fall victim to Ali G's inane questions is "60 Minutes" curmudgeon Andy Rooney, who lost his temper and tossed Ali G from his office while the rapper (who is white) accused him of being a racist — a sensitive subject with Rooney. The surreal segment aired during the end credits on last Sunday's episode on HBO. To land Rooney for the show, "Ali G"...

Right now, as you read these words, I am helping to kill something I love. Although I had heard often about this quandary in the country-western songs that blared out of my mother's car stereo while I was growing up, I never really faced it myself until last week, when Da Ali G Show: The Complete First Season DVD showed up in my mailbox. For the uninitiated, Da Ali G Show is a spoof reality show in which British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen travels America in one of three guises — Ali G, a "hip-hop journalist" clad in a yellow...

<p>May 14, 2003 -- THE bad blood between HBO and feminist author Naomi Wolf continues to boil. Some months ago, faux-black British satirist Ali G interviewed Wolf for his "Da Ali G Show," in which he rankled the former Al Gore image consultant by bragging that he called his girlfriend "bitch" in bed, among other feminist-flustering remarks. In a subsequent interview with New York magazine, the comic branded Wolf the "world's most famous lesbian" (Wolf is in fact married with kids). The humorless Wolf later wrote an op-ed piece in the London Sunday Times saying she had called an HBO lawyer to complain of Ali G's "racist humor" and implied that she got the interview shelved in the U.S. But an HBO spokeswoman insists the "decision to not use the Naomi Wolf piece was made prior to her phone call to HBO." Wolf isn't the first unsuspecting celebrity ambushed by Ali G (alter-ego of Cambridge-educated Sacha Cohen): Newt Gingrich, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Marlin Fitzwater have all grown exasperated by Ali G's lame-brained line of questioning.</p>

Feminist writer consults lawyers over Ali G Feminist writer Naomi Wolf has reportedly called in lawyers after being the victim of a spoof interview with Ali G. She claims she was used for racist humour, after the comic accosted her at a hotel in New York for his new US chat show. It is thought Wolf was furious when Ali - alias Sacha Baron Cohen - boasted to her that he called his girlfriend, Julie, bitch in bed. And he got her to rap: "Yo, yo, don't be sexist, I'll let you ride in my Lexus." He then asked the...

Is You Wicked? By MAUREEN DOWD ames Baker, the former secretary of state who helped make two Bushes president, the first by sniping at Massachusetts, the second by snatching away Florida, is an extremely careful man. A dignified diplomat with a deep fear of ridicule, Mr. Baker always keeps his suit jacket and his public utterances buttoned. That is why I was dumbfounded one recent night to see him being interviewed on HBO by a hip-hop guy wearing fatigues, shades, a skullcap and bling-bling and talking like a British gangsta/Rasta rapper. The young man was asking a skeptical and increasingly...

Sacha Baron Cohen is a white, British-Jewish comedian who has made a nice living by dressing up as a "hip-hop journalist" (lurid yellow running suit, wraparound sunglasses, knitted hat) named Ali G. In this persona, Cohen dupes important people into appearing on TV with him in an interview format, where he asks them silly questions phrased in low street slang. This act has been so successful in Britain that celebrities there are no longer taken in by Cohen's requests for "interviews." He has therefore brought it to the U.S.A., where it began airing on HBO this February. Among those reeled...

Ali G and his film crew have been forced to flee a mob of neo-Nazis while working in the US. Sacha Baron Cohen was playing a camp Austrian fashion reporter called Bruno when he angered white supremacists at a rally in Georgia. A cameraman was attacked after the comic wound up one of the mob by admiring the racists' look - and asking if they used moisturiser. Producer Dan Mazer told the New York Times: "I can't remember what the trigger question was, but all of a sudden the guy we were interviewing exploded. "He started physically attacking the cameraman...