The Anti-Defamation League takes its vigilance to extreme lengths. Now they are warning about the dangers of comedy that is too high-brow for everyone to understand. For example, the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan features an anti-Semitic character from Kazakhstan named Borat. Borat is created and played by a Jewish comedian named Sacha Baron Cohen.
The ADL worries that not everyone will understand the satirical nature of Cohen’s sketch, fearing the humor to be dangerously too sophisticated for some: “When approaching this film, one has to understand that there is absolutely no intent on the part of the filmmakers to offend, and no malevolence on the part of Sacha Baron Cohen, who is himself proudly Jewish. We hope that everyone who chooses to see the film understands Mr. Cohen’s comedic technique, which is to use humor to unmask the absurd and irrational side of anti-Semitism and other phobias born of ignorance and fear.
“We are concerned, however, that one serious pitfall is that the audience may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke, and that some may even find it reinforcing their bigotry,” the press release elaborated.
You be the judge.
on last week’s “Countdown”, and I didn’t think it was anti-Semitic.
I just thought it was stupid.
Guess I’m not in the money demo anymore, at the ancient age of 47…now where the hell is my walker and my Geritol?
Careful, you just can’t get too much beyond the three stooges without confusing people.
You have gotta love edgy comedy. Too bad most people are too PC about certain kinds of humor.
You have to see the entire show to realize just how stupid and funny this can all bge at times. Noone is going to take this guy seriously about anything. I wouldn’t call it highbrow. LOL
I guess the total amorality of our ‘host’ is besides the point. The only thing that matters is some comic’s percieved Jewishness?
That is some sick bullshit.
Guy’s raving about the ‘fun’ of killing animals that will soon be extinct and yer worried about the ADL?
Time to consider your values and theirs.
Sick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65d6_NQaOHo
I wonder if the ability to leap from wild speculation to sweeping insults in a single bound is considered a super power. Do you wear a cape?
The ADL worries that not everyone will understand the satirical nature of Cohen’s sketch, fearing the humor to be dangerously too sophisticated for some
I trust the ADL is referring to the right-wingers?
Is that Ali G is certainly not my definition of “High Brow”. The thing is that if you are a racist fuck you might think that its Ok to be a racist fuck, the hunter in that clip certainly thinks so.
Ali G is hardly highbrow. The next thing you know, Monty Python will be rebuked for making fun of Jesus’s followers. Not everyone is smart enough to know they were serious.
Cohen exposes the latent racism and general mean-spiritness of a lot of people by engaging in it himself. It might not all be brilliant, it might not all hit the right spots, and it might not strike a lot of people as funny. But getting a bar full of Arizonans to sing “Throw the Jew Down the Well” is both sad and funny. Even as he glories in pulling it off, you know inwardly that it is heartbreaking for him.
That’s what makes it compelling.
Bingo.
He holds a mirror up to society and sometimes what is reflected is nothing to be proud of, or hide from ultimately.