The bigger point is missed here, and it's not really sexual. Baron Cohen has taken a cue from Progressives, that it's OK to think your political opponents are a joke, and has taken it one step further, he belongs to that class of Englishmen, be they Labour or Tory, that believes America and all Americans are a joke, including Progressives. The joke's not only on Appalachia's hillbillies but also on African Americans and New York's white Brahmins. It's the opposite of "the importance of being earnest", Brits like Baron Cohen are smart and cynical, they really do hate us, regardless of our identity politics, because we're arrogant enough to think foreigners really have the free time to try to figure out what Americans political ideologies are. Progressives are the worst offenders, as they assume they are more "caring" and ironically more like the Europeans than the hillbillies, and earnestly expect the Europeans to care about their American special interests. The reality is Americans of all stripes are ignorant of most things outside our border, notwithstanding Hollywood's faux obsession with Darfur, and act like foreigners don't have their own issues to deal with, as we are so up to our eyebrows in our own local reality. We're all stupid Yanks to them, regardless of our ethnicity, color, creed, or political persuasion. Cohen's smart, he'll take all our green at the box office though and send it back to London. Cohen wins and Americans lose their money at the box office again, suuckers.

did you know that for a I-phone you can get a baby in Africa!

growls a lot. You should come to Black Sea and we could have fun as American sailors did last year when they came to see Georgia. We have caviare too from Caspian Sea - reely scumptious as my Australian language teacher, Daphne says when we have orgy. She also say "fair dinkum" a lot. She's mighty fine woman and we have jolly good time. Your president Obamma was here too (in Moscow I mean) but I don't think he had jolly good fun. He might have some in Italy with that Casanova, Mr. Berlusconi, who have great sense of fun. I was looking at pictures of Italian Minister of Equal Opportunities, She is babe. I must put tail on her as I'd like to listen to phone calls. Mr. Berlusconi is very humerus and Mr. Cohen should study him. He eats caviare too and Daphne has luvley poem about caviare which I hope you to enjoy: Caviare comes from the virgin sturgeon, the virgin sturgeon's a verry fine fish, the virgin sturgeon needs no urgin' and that's why caviare's a verry rare dish". Daphne is hoot and cannot stand wowsers but is fair game for lotta fun.

Some people are verry sour and Mr. Cohen should be not so unkind. That bleaching of orifice put them in awful bad mood. Looking at Internet gives mucho laughs. I'm learning Spanish too from Esmeralda (muy guapa!) as I go to see California reel soon.

This stupid *unt would not have a chance were he called Sacha Baron Smith.

The only reason he gets publicity, it's because he's a Jew.

OMG, Israel is just a military base for the US.

Such horror.

Why does MSM or even not so MSM making such a big deal out of what they think is supposed messages that are being sent subliminally to viewers. My Gosh even Transformers II can't escape this nonsense what with cars that talk Ghetto.

It's a movie, it's for entertainment, Boraks a comic, he's nuts, he's for show..he's not running for Governor of Alaska nor is he attempting to send messages or represent any group. He's outrageous and his ploy worked because you wrote a column and now 10,000 more will go see his movie and plunk stimulus money down and make Borak richer.

Please..next you'll be saying he has set back the Gay cause 5 years...

So much projection onto this guy. Why does it have to be socially relevant at all? He is a brilliant comedic actor. For all three characters, his facial expressions and body language are often all it takes to get me going . . . yes in a lot of ways it is similar to the charred cork minstrel shows, but so what? People used to find those funny, and while we think they are socially repugnant NOW, it was not merely the poking fun at blacks that attracted people. It was the slapstick and the yuk yukking at superstitious types. If you ever read the old Popeye comics, they were very much the same. . . he was terrified of "evil spiriks" and constantly getting into brawls.

Bruno by the way is not ripping on the gay community as a whole, he is ripping on the tiny subculture of wealthy fashionistas and other celebs whose lifestyle he has taken to a logical extreme. It is NOT THAT HARD to wrap your head around. Christ.

did you know that "Schindler's List" is the most popular movie in the Gaza Strip?

Cohen stopped social satire when he left England. The UK Da Ali G Show segments with the boorish, moronic stereotype of the underclass as wannabe-rapper interviewing high class British elite scholars and assorted “Sir’s” were in a small way a commentary on how the upper-class viewed the lower-class. But any commentary goes out of the window when you’re clearly going out of your way to bait people. For the most part it was just Cohen trying to see how many dick-jokes he could work in before they said something. But the HBO remodel of the show removed even that tiny amount of social commentary. Unless you think Sascha-As-Ali trying to rile up conservative guests by talking about how much premarital sex he has counts as social commentary.

The Borat character was much funnier, but again not really a social commentary on xenophobia, anti-semitism or misogyny since most guests didn’t take the bait and those that did Cohen had to work for for 5 minutes to get a 15 second soundbyte of them finally agreeing with his racist viewpoint, probably just to get him to shut up. It was funny if you took it as it was: the hilarity of how far you have to push some people with annoyance before they stop being polite. But it exposed nothing about “the darkside of America” as his biggest fans liked to push it as.

Bruno was never, ever funny. It doesn’t work as a commentary of how uncomfortable straight people feel being around gay people since like with Borat he always has to work incredibly hard to get a split-second of the reaction he wants. It could have worked as a commentary on the ridiculousness of celebrity gossip reporters and celebrity-worshippers, but it rarely goes in that direction. Instead it’s just “How many exaggerated gay stereotypes can I throw at you before I get a reaction?” And ironically, if Bruno on television and in the film shows us anything, it’s that Americans are nearly as homophobic as believed since he never gets the reactions he wants.