Udolpho.com
 

Eh, Borat?… The Independent quotes a very earnest Sacha Baron Cohen:

 

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.'

 

Who cares?  But I didn't realize that apathy is best revealed through careful staging, audience prep, video recording, and editing of the results.  Is Cohen really such a blowhard that he thinks getting a bunch of drunken revelers to sing "Throw the Jew down the well" is proof of Western indifference about anti-Semitism?  It's not even an indictment of country-western bars.  (Cohen knows very well that it would be easier, not harder, to get an audience of Jesse Jackson supporters to sing that refrain.  But this would make the urban sophisticates who howl with glee at this "transgressive" comedy very sad, so that's out.)  And so what if it is.  Many stand-up comics bring material a thousand times more risqué than that to the stage every day.  Does Cohen want a cookie?

 

By the way, we're all impressed you went to Cambridge and "studied the Holocaust".  That was obviously time well spent, since it's such an obscure and difficult subject.  Now that you possess all that knowledge you can produce comedies that will stay in the public imagination longer than Nancy Pelosi's career as Speaker…or not. Friday, November 17, 2006 - 10:45 PM  

 
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