That joke isn't funny anymore

Borat, Borax, Boring: I saw the ads in heavy rotation, I drank a bleach cocktail to kill the bad taste, and yet it was all incredibly tiresome.

Make it stop. Please. I know we have a jerk for a president, a bunch of thugs that make up his cabinet, use up most of the world's natural resources, and spit up the spent waste into the sky, the ocean, and the earth. But are we really so bad that we deserve the impending unnatural disaster that is Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan?

Goodness, the commercials are everywhere--Rick Santorum should have so many ads on the telly at the moment. It might boost his poll numbers above 40 percent for next week's mid-term elections. Not that we should encourage that, of course, but total airwave saturation with commercials that make him look both idiotic and smug and the country he professes to love look moronic and easily duped might represent a more effective media strategy than his current one . . . which, come to think of it, is exactly that.

Oh well. Keep up the good work, Rick!

Anyway, I'm sure there are some kernels of humor on the ol' corncob of comedy that Sacha Baron Cohen's insists on wiping his ass with--in public no less. I mean, the man can be convincing in character, whether its surly Brit hip-hopper Ali G or fatuous and fey Austrian fashionista Brüno. (Editor's note: Baron Cohen does have some good lines. Watching the November 2, 2006, edition of The Daily Show, in which he was interviewed as Borat, the comedian did make me chuckle with this observation about Madonna: "It is interesting that your most famous female pop star is a transvestite, no? In my country, someone like that person would be in the circus.") Thus, there's obviously comedic talent in there somewhere.

In addition, Sacha B. C. just got paid something like $40 million U.S. to next bring Brüno to the tarnished screen. And money does equal talent and worth, doesn't it? After all, that's why we see Donald Trump and Paris Hilton ubiquitous in the media, rather than Nelson Mandela or that nice professional man who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his development of microcredit in Bangladesh.

But, oh dear, characterizations of swishy Salzburg TV hosts and wild-and-crazy foreign reporters with language skills in dire need of a Rosetta Stone tutorial, well, thees comedy ees so hilarious, no? Not to the mentionableness of originalitude. Ha, I laugh, and your American national dreenk, Coca-Coly, come out, how you say, my schnozz!

Well, no, actually, it's not that original, it's only funny maybe once if you're lucky, and, come to think of it, it stopped being funny sometime in junior high.

In the pro-Borat argument I heard recently on Deutsche Welle's "Inside Europe" radio program, apparently, the "deeper meaning" behind the farce that is Borat is that the character says these rude things to show how people don't protest against prejudice, how in fact they'll often agree with it. In that same radio interview, one of the pro-Borat camp remarked how anyone who doesn't get the joke just isn't very bright.

So, silly me, it's not so much that there's anything wrong with Borat & Company's fool-me-for-eternity-on-celluloid brand of humor, that it might be considered juvenile, tacky, or offensive by some. No, what's really up is that anyone who doesn't like it is just plain stoo-pid. Not much room for negotiation on that one, I guess. Still, that's an interesting way to justify someone's public smart-assedness. He's not a jerk! He's a liberator! Nonetheless, I'm still not convinced that our dear Mr. Baron Cohen isn't doing anything more than getting noticed. Oh, and rich. Forty million dollars' worth of rich.

Yet, despite the ill-explained, post-modern, guerrilla approach to frat boy comedy, some representatives from Europe's Roma community (known most commonly in this country as the Gypsies, although some consider this a pejorative term) are apparently offended by S.B.C.'s--or rather, Borat's--negative comments about their people. It goes without saying that the Roma haven't had an easy time of it in the world, and still don't in much of Eastern and Central Europe. But what, Sacha E. Newman worry?

As it's been reported in the press, Mr. B. C. is Jewish, yet through his Borat character he makes cartoonishly prejudicial statements against Jews and Judaism. All for a laugh and no offense intended, of course. After all, no one would think that someone who is Jewish would be anti-Semitic (Hitler aside, of course). Thus we don't take it too seriously and all is forgiven, in fact, because we allow room for Mr. Baron Cohen to make fun of prejudices against his own group.

So, by that same argument then, I guess we can assume that Mr. Baron Cohen is also vaguely Muslim (Ali G), Austrian (Brüno), gay (Brüno), Kazakh (Borat), American (Borat), and fond of running around in a neon-colored sling-shot thong (Borat), too? It's only logical.

Some might dismiss my carping as evidence that I don't have a sense of humor, to which I would beg to differ. It may be alternately bad and tacky, but I got me one, nonetheless. I like a good laugh as much as anyone, even one at my own expense, and can also appreciate one even at my own tribe's expense. I watch South Park, after all, even though I think it at times is overly generous with the "faggot" perjorative.

Nonetheless, what I'm less enthralled with is making fun of others, especially historically easy targets. (Politicians and celebrities not included--I have nothing against easy and deserving targets). So me and my limited intellect keep coming back to the same point, and that is, what's the point of Sacha B. C.'s humor other than to make people look stupid? Or to show how stupid people really are with very little prompting? Or to show stupid people in their natural, stupid environments? Please, I just need to get on the freeway, negotiate a turf war on the job, or watch episodes of just about any "reality"-based TV show to know that we're all plenty stupid.

Mr. Baron Cohen's brand of comedy just all seems rather mean-spirited, not just toward suburban London hip-hoppers or Julie Andrews-loving TV personalities or Kazakh national jokes, but also toward those that Ali/Borat/Bruno are duping. Fake TV personality fake interviews real persons and makes them look really dumb. Hardy har har. Stop, plees, I no can take thees comedy styleengs.

No, really, I mean it stop. I'm bored by your act.

Canadian TV personality Rick Mercer has done it before in his CBC show, Talking to Americans, in which he travels the U.S., sticking a microphone and a camera in some clue-free citizen's face and asking him or her to agree with him on some ridiculous statement about Canada. "Senator, won't you join me in congratulating Canada on getting its first flush toilet!"

In addition, The Daily Show does this all the time, too, in the interview segments conducted by their comedy team, getting rather slow-synapsed bigots to out themselves with crazy talk on their pet hates. My personal favorite was the interview with the representative from, I believe, the Family Research Council, who kept claiming that gay men participated exclusively in water sports as a recreational activity--and I ain't talking the kind with skis and a speedboat, folks. (For the record, we don't. Ewwwww.)

Granted, these national embarrassments are hardly victims (some of them are too busy victimizing others, actually), but, nevertheless, I don't really enjoy watching The Daily Show's fake news reporters act all smug and snarky as they unwrap the rube's mental rubbish for the world to see, then proceed to prod and poke it with a stick to reveal the especially nasty bits. Firstly, it's not like we weren't aware of their idiocy already. Secondly, it's not like treating them like the buffoons they are really serves any purpose other than a cheap laugh, not to mention making the interviewer look like a self-satisfied ass.

So, in conclusion, I'm all for protecting the rights of stupid people to be really stupid . . . .

But pardon me if I don't feel like spending $2.25 a gallon on gas, $8 on a movie ticket, and $15 on soda and a "fun-sized" box of Raisinets to be subjected to more dumb Americans on the big screen in an overly long, leftover Candid Camera sketch. If I want to see that, I'll just tune into an entire season of Big Brother on my 32-inch TV.