Sacha Baron Cohen’s safe humor

Hey Dan:I’ll give you a little clue here about “subscription required” and all it takes is your public library card. A little more effort for sure, but a great endaround the walls of the NYT…

Supposedly, Brooks’s bread winner is conservative opinion writing. I wouldn’t seek him even for that, let alone movie reviews or interpreting social anything.All Brooks is talking about in the excerpt you cite is that Cohen is so brave he goes into his target’s nest and provokes them with ‘ridicule’ and gets away with it.Actually that kind of misunderstands Cohen’s aim here. His is a further goal. Coehn seeks to disarm his guests and make them feel at ease and throw at them something sinister and gauge how his audience is reacting. Is it sliding by? Is it registering with these ‘dimwits’? Are they peeved or upset at the overt bigotry or are they complacent or even worse, complicit? Just laughing it off, right??Is that bigotted statment actually somehow to a degree a reflection of what they hold inside and wouldn’t say it in a normal situation and now that it has come out in a “harmless” moment, no red flags were raised.”Jacka$$” TV pranks in MTV or VH1 or whatever other idiotic network is ridicule. Cohen’s stuff goes further for sure.This is one of the rarest articles where he is speaking out character:Speaking to Neil Strauss, A pretty revealing exchange.A provocative cover to with it too:All the way, Two things I think are not addressed enough:1- We are all giggling about the jokes. But what kind of discussion are we really having about this undercurrent of bigotry gently being uncovered. No media pieces are done about the fact that people when presumably not being watched are complicit in aspects long thought gone.2- People are worried about it fueling antisemitism here. I think the bigger threat is in former Soviet republics and other slavic lands, where there are actuall overt and often violent antisemitic acts and where the social awareness we enjoy here lacks and the media and governments are often blaze about such acts, if not gleeful. So to my eyes, this is putting Jewish communities in those kind of countries more at risk than in the West. That is not being discussed enough and I don’t think Mr Cohen himself in hindsight really grasps or addresses this secondary risk to his Box Office success.N.

Mike: Well aware that the Times, the Globe, the Herald and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette are available through most public libraries around here. No way to provide a link, though, since not everyone uses the same library, and not everyone has a library card.N.: Brooks’ “bread winner” is social criticism. He’s very good at it — far better than he is at conservative opinion-mongering. You should check out his book “Bobos in Paradise.”

Hey Dan:I’m sure you’re aware (but maybe not other posters), you can get significant access to historical databases at your public library, including newspapers, periodicals, etc. However what I was really getting at was many library systems also provide access to these same databases from your home computer. Kind of makes it worthwhile to get a library card for sure. Anyone out there should check out their library’s website to see what is offered; you might be pleasantly surprised (especially if you’re trying to find an article more than 30 days old, which even if you are a subscriber to the newspaper’s website, say the Globe, WSJ or NYT, you generally have to pay around 3 bucks an article to access through the newspaper’s website archives).Surprised no posting yet on Dice-Kay, BTW.

I have not seen “Borat” yet, either. However, my wife is the Director of International Programs at a local college with some Kazakh students. My co-worker lived there (twice) for over a year (she just graduated from a different college). Judging from what they feel and what they’re hearing…few people from Kazakhstan are happy about “Borat”. Many people are very, very pissed.And I’d argue they’re justified. Sacha Baron Cohen can talk all he wants about how he made a completely unbelievable character…and that people are dumb for thinking that’s how real Kazakhs are. The reality is that it’s been repeatedly shown that there is nothing so dumb and unbelieveable, that some people won’t still believe it’s true. Christ, how many people still think Iraq was involved with 9/11?? Admittedly, I think a movie like “Borat” may ultimately do more good than harm by ripping off the lid on how racist America still really is. But Baron Cohen shouldn’t be allowed to hide from the fact that he really f**ked over a lot of people in the process. Something tells me that if another comic played a ridiculously stereotypical Jew that had as many nasty allusions as his Borat character does…Baron Cohen would be high pissed.

As expected, a trouble-rousing Scotto has to bring it back to a group he despises and uses to make money everyday.Very classy, Scott-nutto. You are a failed and a horrible talk show host, who is still employed simply by default due to lack of available talent. Ratings are in the dumps and you are a worse bore than ever.Why do you feel the need to take needless shots and embolden a perception about your company it has already cemented??This is in the same wavelength with that ‘enlightened bright’ bulb called Jackson. Only a sad and depleted roster from a radio station that has been proven worng so many times and is obviously pandering to a minority of voters in this state/area, can give airtime to such …what’s the word ….big….naaah..id…naaaah…mor….nahhh How about unamerican frauds and subversives?RKO is on its way to being a more profitable station, ie a second outlet for sports programming. Resources were already limited for WRKO in favor of its more popular sportstalker sibling. Now with the news cut and new contracts, it is on its way to being even less relevant in the news talk area, save for the popular and more listenable Carr.WRKO is not alone. The town’s other fasc…errr…boisterous talker is in the dumps and the new mutli-million dollar buyback contract from the Empire State there is no more than a ratings whimper and an exposed failure/fraud on many facets.It ain’t working, folks. Get a mirror!N.

Mike,I find myself agreeing with your comments. As I mentioned, I haven’t seen the movie, and I should have mentioned that I do plan to see it. I think I, rather imperfectly, was trying to point to something about the uncomfortable, decidedly politically incorrect nature of comedy. When it comes down to it, if something makes you laugh, it’s funny — it really is that simple. However, for years people routinely laughed at black-faced actors and their racist Rufus-and-Rastus sketches; I guess that means they were funny, or they were then. Similarly, on a recent Chris Rock HBO special, Rock riffs on why black athletes are superior to white ones. His explanation? The identical explanation — essentially, white slavemasters breeding bigger and stronger slaves — that got Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder fired from his sports analyst position on CBS more than 20 years ago. Americans called for Snyder’s head, but are now laughing out loud at Rock. Guess it’s all in the delivery.

The people who had drinks thrown in the faces by Andy Kaufmann probably didn’t think it was funny either, but it still was.