Ali G: A Clear and Present danger?

Don't these morons have anything better to do? Is the need to avoid even an appearance of a shandeh far di goyim so important that they have to resort to this:



Via Salon:

According to the New York Post, the British government and the U.K.'s Jewish Board of Deputies are "investigating" comic Sacha Baron Cohen for a recent performance on another HBO Sunday show, "Da Ali G Show." In this particular episode, Cohen portrays one of his three main characters, Borat, a TV reporter from Kazakhstan, who pretends to be trying to become a Country-Western singer. In the process, he manages to dupe an audience at a rural bar in Arizona into singing along with him -- enthusiastically -- to a phony song called "Throw the Jew Down the Well." (Sample lyrics: "Throw the Jew down the well/ So my country can be free/You must grab him by his horns/ Then we have a big party.") What could happen after all this "investigating" of Cohen (who, by the way, is Jewish) is unclear -- but the Anti-Defamation League is also bothered by the show. "While we understand this scene was an attempt to show how easily a group of ordinary people can be encouraged to join in an anti-Semitic chorus, we are concerned that the irony may have been lost on some of the audience, or worse still that they simply accepted Borat's statements about Jews at face value," the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman is quoted telling the Post.

Gawd. Whatever happened to the "It's OK To Knock Your Own Team" rule? For that matter, what happened to satire?



Granted, Cohen's gonzo ambushes of the unsuspecting are somewhat of an acquired taste, one which I'm still not sure if I've acquired or not, but come ON. Is it a secret that people in rural parts of the country still retain some archaic beliefs about Jews? Hell, when I first went to college in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, I was asked where MY horns were. As recently as 1993, a Roman Catholic co-worker of Cuban descent asked me, "We have the 10 Commandments. What do Jews have?"



What can you answer to a question like this, other than "We ritually sacrifice and devour Christian babies on Shabbos, what do you think?"



This is what Sascha Baron Cohen is trying to point out. Sometimes the bit works, sometimes it doesn't. My own personal preference is for the "Borat" character cited here over the Ali G persona, whom I find just a tad TOO raw. Borat is a good-natured bumpkin supposedly from Kazakhstan, though he probably should have appropriated Steven Spielberg's "Krakhozhia" from the recent film The Terminal; God knows enough jokes could have been made from that name alone. But Borat is, in fact, Tom Hanks' Viktor Navorski -- if Trey Parker and Matt Stone had created him.



Doesn't anyone realize that depicting people enjoying such lyrics says more about the people who are depicted as enjoying them than it does about their subject?



Sheesh.