← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · weisbrot
Thread ID: 16295 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-01-13
2005-01-13 21:33 | User Profile
I grew up not too far from Roanoke, and can vouch that Mr. Cohen is very lucky to be in one piece. These are good people who are slow to anger but quite dangerous when their Scots-Irish temper gets up. The people of Southwest VA can recognize real satire as well as anyone else, but Cohen's act isn't mere satire.
That said, this can only be for the good. The organizers were obviously doing their multiculturalist best to reach out when asked to allow a Khazak to sing the national anthem. Their hearts were probably about to burst with inclusive pride until the Khazak revealed his lizardlike Cohen character by mocking them. This is yet another case of the tribe pushing it just a bit too far; I've seen this thing on TV once and it is obvious that his act relies on the good nature of his targets, initially. Cohen thinks he is mocking societal norms and the simple gentiles he tricks, but the real message of his backstabbing approach and reliance on tolerance-indoctrination is getting through to his subjects and most likely his audience. A day of reckoning may well be on the way for the Cohanim...
"Ali G" Risks Riot At US Rodeo
[IMG]http://xtramsn.co.nz/homepage2/imageView/0,,4017733,00.jpeg[/IMG]
View larger image Ali G. Photot John Pryke. Reuters 14/01/2005 Reuters Comedian Sasha Baron Cohen has escaped a near-riot at an American rodeo while filming his satirical Da Ali G Show.
According to a report in the Roanoke (Virginia) Times, a man who was introduced as Boraq Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan - in reality a Cohen character named Borat - appeared at the rodeo over the weekend after organisers agreed to have him sing the national anthem.
After telling the crowd he supported America's war on terrorism, he said, "I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards ... And may George W Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq." He then sang a garbled version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
The Roanoke Times reported that the crowd turned "downright nasty." One observer said "If he had been out there a minute longer, I think somebody would have shot him."
Cohen and his film crew were escorted out of the Salem Civic Center and told to leave the premises.
"Had we not gotten them out of there, there would have been a riot," rodeo producer Bobby Rowe told the paper. "They loaded up the van and they screeched out of there."
It is not the first time Cohen has wooed controversy with his show, which airs on Channel 4 in the UK and on HBO in the United States. In one episode last year, Borat sang an anti-Semitic song called "Throw the Jew Down the Well" at a US country music bar, prompting protests from the US-based Anti-Defamation League.
Producers of the Ali G show, Talkback Thames, were unavailable for comment.
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