Charles Krauthammer takes a look at Sacha Baron Cohen and an interview he gave to Rolling Stone and wonders what Cohen is thinking. Cohen's "Borat" character is a big hit at the movies using a shtick that reveals, in Cohen's words, "if not anti-Semitism, then "indifference" to anti-Semitism," among Americans. Krauthammer calls this badly misdirected.
Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Borat, revealed his purpose for doing that in a rare out-of-character interview he granted Rolling Stone in part to counter charges that he was promoting anti-Semitism. On the face of it, this would be odd, given that Cohen is himself a Sabbath-observing Jew. His defense is that he is using Borat's anti-Semitism as a "tool" to expose it in others. And that his Arizona bar stunt revealed, if not anti-Semitism, then "indifference" to anti-Semitism. And that, he maintains, was the path to the Holocaust.
Whoaaaa. Does he really believe such rubbish? Can a man that smart (Cambridge, investment banker and now brilliant filmmaker) really believe that indifference to anti-Semitism and the road to the Holocaust are to be found in a country-and-western bar in Tucson?
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.
With anti-Semitism reemerging in Europe and rampant in the Islamic world; with Iran acquiring the ultimate weapon of genocide and proclaiming its intention to wipe out the world's largest Jewish community (Israel); with America and, in particular, its Christian evangelicals the only remaining Gentile constituency anywhere willing to defend that besieged Jewish outpost — is the American heartland really the locus of anti-Semitism? Is this the one place to go to find it?
In Venezuela, Hugo Ch?vez(sic) says that the "descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ" have "taken possession of all the wealth in the world." Just this month, Tehran hosted an international festival of Holocaust cartoons featuring enough hooked noses and horns to give Goebbels a posthumous smile. Throughout the Islamic world, newspapers and television, schoolbooks and sermons are filled with the most vile anti-Semitism.
Read the whole thing. He's actually pretty gentle in the way he tries to point out that Cohen has this exactly wrong. Americans really are not the ones to be worrying about right now. I have no intention of seeing the Borat movie, personally. There is a certain indifferent mean-spiritedness in the way the movie was put together that bothers me. It's not my kind of humor. But I think Krauthammer is correct here, Cohen might better watch the real anti-Semitism all around the world than worrying too awfully much about the "indifference to" it he sees in America. He may be looking in the wrong places all together.
UPDATE: Others: Done With Mirrors, Soccer Dad, Wake up America, Atlas Shrugs,
Iran has never proclaimed an intention of wiping out Israel, i.e., killing the Israelis. The dishonesty of this canard undercuts what those who repeat it have to say about anything. They are liars and they lie because they have contempt for truth and for the rest of us.
Ahmadinejad explained it on 60 Minutes and its really nothing new. I saw an Iranian reporter on C-SPAN say that Ahmadinejad was saying what Ayatollah Khomeini had said: Israel is a fabrication and the people of the region should have the right to self determination. With the right to self determination, “Israel” would be “wiped off” the map, the same way that the Montenegrans seceded from Serbia and the nation of Czechoslovakia dissolved, i.e., peacefully through referendums and peaceful negotiation.
Here’s another story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/world/middleeast/21land.html?em&ex=1164344400&en=946a65172ac03fd9&ei=5087
Let’s not hear any more yapping about how terrible the Kelo “eminent domain” decision was by our politicians if its OK for Israel and Israelis to disregard private property rights entirely.