Borat Sagdiyev Versus Kazakhstan



Although Kazakhstan is the most urbanized of the Central Asian republics, it still can't get no respect. Fellow blogger Daniel Radosh's brilliant New Yorker Talk of the Town analysis of Ali G actor Sacha Cohen's send up of Kazakhstan appeared, once and for all, to put an end to questions of dodginess in the world's 9th largest country. But according to The Daily Mirror, the problems may just be beginning:

"Yerzhan Ashikbayev, a senior foreign ministry official in Kazakhstan, said: 'It could be regarded as an attempt to fire up inter-ethnic tension.'

"A show insider said: 'Sacha was sending up Americans watching Borat for their lack of knowledge of foreign affairs. It was not a dig at the Kazakhs.'"

And in the now famous Radosh piece, he wrote:

"Roman Vassilenko, the press secretary for the Embassy of Kazakhstan, wants to clear up a few misconceptions about his country. Women are not kept in cages. The national sport is not shooting a dog and then having a party. You cannot earn a living being a Gypsy catcher. Wine is not made from fermented horse urine. It is not customary for a man to grab another mans khrum. 'Khrum' is not the word for testicles.

"These falsehoods, and many others, have been spread by Borat, a character on 'Da Ali G Show,' which recently finished its second season on HBO. Like Ali G, Borat is played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comedian who specializes in prank interviews.

"It was partly Borats casual but relentless anti-Semitism that led Vassilenko to object publicly, in a letter to The Hill, a Washington weekly. (In real life, Cohen is an observant Jew, but the Anti-Defamation League also condemned him, arguing that 'the irony may have been lost on some of the audience.')

?'He says things that make people think that Kazakhstan really is a backward country,' Vassilenko said last week from his office in Washington."

In his letter to The Hill, Vassilenko wrote, in part:

"Mr. Cohen could not have been more wrong when he chose Kazakhstan as the home country of a mythical misogynist and anti-Semitic reporter, which he portrays in his 'Da Ali G Show' on HBO.

"I am deeply offended by that choice, as are many people in Kazakhstan and as the people of any other country so 'favored' would be, and I express our strong objection. Particularly disgusting is Mr. Cohens portraying of Kazakhstan as a land of Stone Age people who mistreat women and hate Jews. For the record, Kazakh-stan is a modern country with thousands of years of history and a rich and diverse culture.

"Our people are highly educated and generally well-mannered"

" ... The ideas of satire and freedom of speech are fine, and we will always defend them vigorously. Yet, in these times of great peril and tension, Mr. Cohen and his show should really know where to draw the line. Humor of Mr. Cohens type is vicious and comes perilously close to 'fighting words.'"

The Corsair mischievously rubs his hands together:

It's on like Gray Poupon!