BORAT

[jbg]

Sound like a country you know and stand on guard for thee????

Ah, more slamming of Canada.

Even a movie like Borat presents you with another opportunity to mash your heal in the face of our great Country.

Love it or leave it Jerry, love it or leave it.

He makes some valid points about multi-culturalism in that post.

[gerryhatrick]

Sound like a country you know and stand on guard for thee????

Ah, more slamming of Canada.

Even a movie like Borat presents you with another opportunity to mash your heal in the face of our great Country.

Love it or leave it Jerry, love it or leave it.

He makes some valid points about multi-culturalism in that post.

Right. multi-culturalism = bad. Real valid point.

:angry:

[jbg]

Sound like a country you know and stand on guard for thee????

Ah, more slamming of Canada.

Even a movie like Borat presents you with another opportunity to mash your heal in the face of our great Country.

Love it or leave it Jerry, love it or leave it.

He makes some valid points about multi-culturalism in that post.

Right. multi-culturalism = bad. Real valid point.

:angry:

I'm a left-winger and I regard it as bad. If I want fascism I can move to Iran.

[Black Dog]

I'm a left-winger and I regard it as bad. If I want fascism I can move to Iran.

I think it's time you got yourself an MRI. Equating multiculturalism to fascism and self-describing as a left winger would appear to be a sign of a stroke or some other medical anomaly.

Also: Jerry's attempts to tie tolerance of Borat's racism to multiculturalism would bear more weight if the movie wasn't largely shot in the United States, which is not a formally multicultural society. Why not stick with the old boogeyman "political correctness"?

[Chrissy1979]

No. Crissy, and others in their lack of understanding, has missed a key point about Borat's Anti-Semitism.

Earlier in this dialogue Crissy made the (unintentionally) error of discerning between people from other cultures and racists:

I think you're projecting errors on others rather than facing your own. I never discerned between people from other cultures and racists. In fact, you don't even know what culture I come from. You're automatically assuming everyone is coming from a white perspective, and they aren't.

Now that you've seen the movie (I assume), you probably realize that your interpretation that it was an expose on undue tolerance of anti-semitism was half-baked and out to lunch.

[gerryhatrick]

Right. multi-culturalism = bad. Real valid point.

:angry:

I'm a left-winger and I regard it as bad. If I want fascism I can move to Iran.

multi-culturalism = fascism now?

[jbg]

Right. multi-culturalism = bad. Real valid point.

:angry:

I'm a left-winger and I regard it as bad. If I want fascism I can move to Iran.

multi-culturalism = fascism now?

Yes. Those straight arm salutes during "cartoon Jihad".

[Black Dog]

multi-culturalism = fascism now?

Yes. Those straight arm salutes during "cartoon Jihad".

These?

[JerrySeinfeld]

I think you're projecting errors on others rather than facing your own. I never discerned between people from other cultures and racists.

Maybe you were too busy getting all hot and bothered you didn't REALIZE that you were:

If you were capable of clearly making your point, I wouldn't have to over-simplify. But you're just confusing the issue more. Is this film a statement that people are too tolerant of racism or a statement, as you originally seemed to state, that people are too politically correct and too tolerant of other cultures?

[BubberMiley]

I think you're projecting errors on others rather than facing your own. I never discerned between people from other cultures and racists.

Maybe you were too busy getting all hot and bothered you didn't REALIZE that you were:

If you were capable of clearly making your point, I wouldn't have to over-simplify. But you're just confusing the issue more. Is this film a statement that people are too tolerant of racism or a statement, as you originally seemed to state, that people are too politically correct and too tolerant of other cultures?

So rather than trying to pretend she's saying that people of other cultures can't be racist, which clearly from this quote she is not, why not answer the actual question?

[JerrySeinfeld]

I think you're projecting errors on others rather than facing your own. I never discerned between people from other cultures and racists.

Maybe you were too busy getting all hot and bothered you didn't REALIZE that you were:

If you were capable of clearly making your point, I wouldn't have to over-simplify. But you're just confusing the issue more. Is this film a statement that people are too tolerant of racism or a statement, as you originally seemed to state, that people are too politically correct and too tolerant of other cultures?

So rather than trying to pretend she's saying that people of other cultures can't be racist, which clearly from this quote she is not, why not answer the actual question?

The answer is IN the question. Let me explain it for you. Most lefties can't grasp this. Basically I started the post saying the movie mock's people's over-tolerance of other cultures' hatreds or racism. The thought that someone else's culture can be objectively WRONG or despicable is not thinkable to a lefty.

The movie BORAT has helped me to illustrate this in spades by evoking reactions from people like Crissy.

She came out and bascially said that the movie ACTUALLY mocks anti-semitism (a form of hatred or racism, no?).

Sure - on the most basic level that's what it does. But it also does something deeper - because of the fact that the "character" in the movie (BORAT) also happens to be from an ethnic far off country called Khazakstan, which most people know nothing about other than it's floating on oil.

So yes, Crissy's simplistic superficial interpretation is sort of correct - it does mock anti-semitism. But at a deeper level it mocks our acceptance of people who are obviously and objectively wrong, yet we accept it because they are from a different culture.

The even greater part about the mockery is how timely it is during a time in our world when Hitler's Mein Kemph (sp?) is a best seller in the world's most populous Muslim country.

And the even greater part still is how lefties like Crissy are so absorbed with the simplistic notion of a jew mocking anti-semitism that they can't see the deeper layers of irony.

[Chrissy1979]

I don't think you have a particularly profound, right-wing sense of nuance, especially when you can't recognize that racism exists in all cultures. I doubt all Kazakhs hate Jews, just as I doubt all southern rednecks hate blacks. Besides, having now seen the movie, it rarely even showed peoples' reactions when he spouted something anti-semitic, so I highly doubt his intent was to expose their excessive tolerance.

[Black Dog]

Baron-Cohen himself has said that Borat "essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudices, whether it's anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism."

'Throw the Jew Down the Well' was a very controversial sketch, and some members of the Jewish community thought it was actually going to encourage anti-Semitism.

"But to me it revealed something about that bar in Tuscon. And the question is: did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism," he said.

Baron Cohen said the concept of "indifference towards anti-Semitism" had been informed by his study of the Holocaust while at Cambridge University, where he read history. "I remember, when I was in university, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.'

"I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic," he said.

Basically I started the post saying the movie mock's people's over-tolerance of other cultures' hatreds or racism. The thought that someone else's culture can be objectively WRONG or despicable is not thinkable to a lefty.

So you're basically admitting you premised your argument on a strawman. Nobody except the most cartoon campus pinko seriously believes that cultural differences excuse objectionable behaviour or beliefs.

But let not the splitting of the hairs here obscure the most important fact: "Borat" is not funny. And Baron-Cohen is a pedant.

[JerrySeinfeld]

I don't think you have a particularly profound, right-wing sense of nuance, especially when you can't recognize that racism exists in all cultures. I doubt all Kazakhs hate Jews, just as I doubt all southern rednecks hate blacks. Besides, having now seen the movie, it rarely even showed peoples' reactions when he spouted something anti-semitic, so I highly doubt his intent was to expose their excessive tolerance.

Huh?

When did I say all Khazaks hate jews? The Mein Kemph reference was to Turkey.

[Electric Monk]

I am a pedant, it's "Mein Kampf", and I found "Borat" funny.

[BubberMiley]

When did I say all Khazaks hate jews?

Didn't you say, somewhere around here in the midst of the bizarre spelling and use of capitalization, that the movie is a statement on people who are too tolerant of cultures that are inherently racist?

That's what most people (obviously Crissy) have a poblem with: they have charicature in their heads that racists are white people, and immigrant cultures can never be racist.

Since it is Kazakhstani culture that is being portrayed to be anti-semitic, aren't you saying this immigrant culture is racist, and therefore all Kazakhstanis hate Jews?

[Wilber]

Considering the amount of debate going on concerning the issues Cohen raised and what he meant by them, it seems he has accomplished something.

[JerrySeinfeld]

When did I say all Khazaks hate jews?

Didn't you say, somewhere around here in the midst of the bizarre spelling and use of capitalization, that the movie is a statement on people who are too tolerant of cultures that are inherently racist?

That's what most people (obviously Crissy) have a poblem with: they have charicature in their heads that racists are white people, and immigrant cultures can never be racist.

Since it is Kazakhstani culture that is being portrayed to be anti-semitic, aren't you saying this immigrant culture is racist, and therefore all Kazakhstanis hate Jews?

No. I'm not saying that at all. The character in the movie could be from bubble-land. It wouldn't matter.

[BubberMiley]

No. I'm not saying that at all. The character in the movie could be from bubble-land. It wouldn't matter.

Why do you hate bubble-people?

[ft.niagara]

No. Crissy, and others in their lack of understanding, has missed a key point about Borat's Anti-Semitism.

Earlier in this dialogue Crissy made the (unintentionally) error of discerning between people from other cultures and racists:

I think you're projecting errors on others rather than facing your own. I never discerned between people from other cultures and racists. In fact, you don't even know what culture I come from. You're automatically assuming everyone is coming from a white perspective, and they aren't.

Now that you've seen the movie (I assume), you probably realize that your interpretation that it was an expose on undue tolerance of anti-semitism was half-baked and out to lunch.

I agree. I can not imagine that Jerry Steinfeld has seen the movie he is comenting about. He sounds like the comedian his name implies, certainly not the social comentator he would like to be. First you do not know who where paid and unpaid actors. Second, some of the Jewish shots were funny AND cruel. The running of the Jews was very funny, but certainly they were paid actors from Romania. Some of the shots were done there. This does not reflect on the US or antisemitism here or there except Cohen's desire for shock and awe. The female Jew laying a Jewish egg which must be broken before it hatches was especially funny, but did not show any political commentary except poor people will do almost anything for money and to be in a movie.

When he is taken into an elderly Jewish couple's home, and he makes like they are trying to poison him is cruel, and without social commentary IMO. I certainly hope they were paid actors also, because if they were not and in on the joke, it was inexcusable.

You can spindoctor anything. However, I feel that Borat was a cheap film to make, will probably make millions, will definately be a cult film for decades, but did not help the Jewish people, no matter how the resident Jewish posters would like to spin it.