Friday, September 29, 2006

The War on Borat


Kazakhstan is still waging a PR campaign against comedic genius Sacha Baron Cohen over his boorish Kazakh journalist character Borat. They've flown to the White House and taken out ads in major American newspapers to counter his satire, and in doing so, set themselves up as perfect straight men. This article has one of my favorite lines on the hilarious controversy. Imagine this being read very stoically by Stone Phillips:

"Nazarbayev and other Kazakh officials have sought to raise the profile of the oil-rich former Soviet republic and assure the West that, contrary to Borat's claims, theirs is not a nation of drunken anti-Semites who treat their women worse than their donkeys."

Cohen's response, in character as Borat is also brilliant:

Borat denounced an official Kazakh publicity campaign running in U.S. magazines as "disgusting fabrications" orchestrated by neighboring Uzbekistan.

"If there is one more item of Uzbek propaganda claiming that we do not drink fermented horse urine, give death penalty for baking bagels, or export over 300 tonnes of human pubis per year, then we will be left with no alternative but to commence bombardment of their cities with our catapults," Borat said.


Freedom is on the march in Eastern Europe.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"...or export over 300 tonnes of human pubis per year..."

Thanks for sharing this, Rufus. I was brushing my teeth while reading this, and now my monitor is fresh and minty.

Rufus said...

My pleasure. I have a feeling this movie is going to be hysterical.