Letters to the Editor
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An Un-P.C. Post That Will Offend All Sides, Equally.
I tried to start watching Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G, where Borat and Bruno first appeared, when it first came out, watched a couple of episodes and found it was variations on the same joke over and over and over. Not nearly as shocking as it obviously prided itself on, particularly because it was yet another one of these supposedly non-P.C. shows that tries too hard to offend "both sides" (tackling, say, gun nuts one instant, feminists the next) like some rigid comedic adherent to the Fairness Doctrine, thus eventually losing all true "shock" or "edge" appeal. Every time you hear the phrase "equal opportunity offender," bank on a thoroughly predictable performer (the most extreme case is Carlos Mencia, who often helpfully tells his audience how "un-P.C." he is, just in case they don't get the point, and would habitually use the phrase "I offend everybody, gays, latinos, old people, etc." even if he was making a commercial for Campbell's Soup). All this "equal opportunity offender" crap is getting to be as dated as a Milli Vanilli record.
God, how refreshing if there really was a truly radical comedian out there, instead of a bunch of boys who fear if they don't play both sides by pretending to offend both sides (conservatives can laugh at the feminists, liberals at the gun nuts, blah, blah, blah), they'll lose money. I've heard Cohen compared with Andy Kaufman, but the last thing Kaufman was interested in in his best work was trying to appease his audience with "equal opportunity offenses." When Kaufman was "on," the audience usually wasn't sitting comfortably back laughing at the dopes on screen; they were too busy wondering if Kaufman was making the audience itself look like rubes for watching. Kaufman blurred the line between where he ended and his public character work began; with Cohen, most audiences sense that he takes off Borat after the show like the guy who plays Ronald McDonald takes off the big shoes and red wig when he gets home from work.
Essentially, Cohen's schtick is the old "Candid Camera" show trying really hard to be edgy. Funny about the first three segments of the first show, increasingly dull after that. Thing is even "Candid Camera" varied its formula more than Cohen does, and you start to wonder if his audience, watching the same trick over and over again, isn't also the butt of Cohen's "look what I can make dumb Americans do" game. ...Hey, on second thought, maybe Sacha Baron Cohen IS Andy Kaufman.