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The opening sequence of Sacha Boren Cohen's 'Who is America?' makes it immediately clear (as if there could ever be any doubt) who the arch satirist has in the cross hairs this time round. Not just the most moronic, and venal, president ever to disgrace the United States but the gun nuts, conspiracy theorists, racists, and women haters that make up both his base and his administration. Appropriately too, Baron Cohen also has a dig at some of Trump's weaker, self-righteous, foes. Those that would rather chant or argue about the minutiae of resistance than get on with the vital job of preventing the rise of fascism across the globe.
The main problem with trying to satirise something so unequivocally ridiculous in the first place is how do you manage to make it look more stupid than it so obviously already is? Tom Lehrer, famously, claimed satire died when Henry Kissinger won a Nobel peace prize but with the inauguration of Trump it seems like slapstick died. Hell, I'm holding him personally responsible for the death of Barry Chuckle.
Baron Cohen, as anyone familiar with Ali G, Borat, or Bruno will already know, simply goes larger. The characters he's invented for Who is America? are utterly ludicrous, they don't seem like real people at all but grotesque caricatures that prey on extant prejudices like a mosquito sucks the blood of a starving child. These are American sized fools. Tremendous. Tremendous fools. Bigly.
There are six of them and some, it has to be said, work better than others. I'm gonna build up from the ones I think are the least successful to the ones that work best. They are, though, all equally daft. Dr Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr is a mobilty scooter driving, brown leather jacket wearing, conspiracy theorist with a shockingly poor grip of both maths and facts. But he's good with the alternative facts. He claims Trump is "the least vain person in the world" (just ask anyone at Trump Tower, Trump Casino, Trump University, they'll tell you "it's never about him), he thinks the American Cancer Society is a liberal organisation that raises money to give Americans cancer, he calls CNN the Communist News Network, and he blames Bob Marley for the invasion of Iraq. He also claims the CIA are 'weaponising weather to bring about global warming, which he calls 'climax change', using helicopters with whisks attached to them. To his credit Bernie Sanders can barely suppress his incredulousness with Ruddick Jr's, intentional, bullshit but this is a pretty broad brush to be painting with.
But then they all are. OMGWhizzBoyOMG is a Finnish children's entertainer who talks like the Swedish chef from the Muppets. His silly accent, his brightly coloured shirts and dungarees, and his shock of orange hair seem to invite his guests to prostate themselves in front of him and reveal their own prejudices surprisingly easily. While unboxing 'shopkins' with former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio (who defends gun ownership to a toy donut) they discuss 'hand jobs' and 'golden showers'. A former sheriff from Wisconsin, David Clarke, (who tells a toy donut not to join Antifa) defends fascists and says he'd have done the same thing in 1930s Germany. Clarke insists it's wrong to take sides. Either now or in 1930s Germany and Arpaio tells OMGWhizzBoyOMG he thinks like Trump. He doesn't though. He's much brighter.
You'll get the idea, correctly, that this show has two main aims. To skewer the rise of American fascism and to make jokes so puerile your average teenage boy would consider them a denigration of the language of Shakespeare. It does it bloody brilliantly though. Milanese fashion photographer, and silver haired playboy, Gio Monaldo being a case in question.
Monaldo, whilst being wanked off and fellated by his much younger girlfriend beneath a rug, tries to buy a yacht for Bashar al-Assad and asks about furnishing it with military hardware, smuggling women (or 'merchandise') on to it to sexually appease al-Assad and his goons, and if it would be possible to murder approximately fifty Syrian refugees using poisoned water. As his 'partner' masturbates him with one hand and idly texts with the other he finds, with apparent glee, that the executive from the yacht company is more than happy to comply with all his demands. Even an interview with OJ Simpson in which Monaldo continually jokes about the ease of killing women who irritate him somehow doesn't result in Baron Cohen losing his cool. How he does it, I do not know!
Rick Sherman is a lisping cockney ex-con with a swallow tattoo in a neck brace trying to make good in the straight world after release from prison. He's aiming for careers in art, music, and haute cuisine and, predictably, his take on all these forms is more than a little crude. As an artist his medium is spunk and shit and he gets a young lady gallery owner to clip a few pubes off her bush for his brush. She unblushingly talks about "oxymoronic paradoxical juxtapositions".
In another episode (there are seven in total) he makes electronic dance music from the sounds of people pissing, puking, and buggering each other which somehow involves him being rapturously received during a DJ set in a high end Florida nightclub. His forays into the world of the chef sees him presenting an esteemed food writer with a prison themed meal that begins with a 'medley' of beans on toast followed by veal smuggled into jail by a man who's secreted it up his bum wrapped in a johnny. 'Anally aged', Sherman calls it. If that sounds unappetising don't worry, it's a strawberry flavoured condom to give it a 'summery feel'.
His final dish is cut from the loin of a dead criminal from Lewisham. "Human but ethical" Sherman reassures his guest who not only happily eats it but also claims it to be one of the greatest taste sensations of his life. He's equally vocal about the wonderful flavours of a "fillet of vegetarian fed Chinese dissident with cauliflower puree".
The two best characters are Erran Morrad and Nira Cain-N'degeocello. From opposite ends of the spectrum. Let's take the well meaning, but utterly clueless and empathy lacking, liberal first and save the right wing psychopath until last. Nira, bald, with a paunch, is a self-hating dogooder who cycles around smalltown America hoping to "heal the divide". He apologises for being white, he apologises for identifying as heterosexual, he lives in a yurt with his wife Naomi and his children Harvey Milk and Malala, and he believes the world's most dangerous chemical weapon is testosterone.
He tells Trump delegates at a conference in South Carolina that his wife
has had sex with a porpoise but not until he's tried to get them
involved in a 'first people's chant'. Then he tells a selection of small town Arizonans he's a representative of both the Clinton Foundation and the Saudi Arabian government and he's there to promote, announce even, the construction of the world's largest mosque outside the Middle East that will make their town a worldwide hub for Islamic tourism. One local boasts loudly of being a racist although there is a more moderate voice from the guy who says they 'tolerate' black people.
I GLAGged willingly at that one but some of the other jokes fell a bit flat. When Nira Cain wears an 'empathy belly' to simulate his partner's regretted pregnancy it all gets a bit too silly. Cain offers to anally insert a child/doll so he can 'give birth' to it and the nurse brings out a canister of WD40 to ease passage from his, hopefully, fake anus. The vision of a baby's head lodged up a liberal's arse is one that will probably stay with me for longer than I'd like it to.
Erran Morrad is an Israeli counter-terrorism expert whose rank changes each episode from Sergeant to Colonel to Brigadier and so on. He looks like an Action Man and marches around with a walk that would have been dismissed by the Ministry of Silly Walks as a bit too much. He wants to arm not just teachers but school children as well. An interview with gun enthusiast, "guns are fun", Philip van Cleave (a man so morally bankrupt that in an interview with Piers Morgan he still looked like the biggest twat) laughs as Morrad blames school shootings on liberals and suggests that as toddlers haven't yet developed a conscience they make very effective killers. 'Kinderguardians' he calls them, and he's invented a range of 'gunimals' so they can transform their toys into highly evolved killing machines in a matter of seconds.
Morrad's guns/toys include the likes of Puppy Pistol, Gunny Rabbit, Uzicorn, Dino-Gun, and BFF (Best Firearm Forever). He's made an instruction video of how to stop 'naughty men' and 'have them take a long nap'. Larry Platt of the American Civil Rights Movement asserts his belief that schools are brainwashing kids into believing that guns are responsible for shooting and that the ant-gun lobby have blood on their hands. Warming to his theme he proposes the idea that Muslims should pray in secret or risk being shot dead and laughs heartily when Morrad says "it's not rape if it's your wife".
Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, to his credit, won't support some of Morrad's crazier ideas but Trent Lott, the former Mississippi senator, and other notable Republican figures go on to both endorse Morrad's murderous plans and rage vehemently against the 'evils' of homosexuality and mental illness. Jason Spencer's contribution to the show was so vile he had to resign after it (so satire can work, Lehrer, even in the most troubling of times). The former member of the Georgia House of Representatives and noted anti-burka campaigner agreed to identify a terrorist hiding beneath a burka using an upskirt selfie. Morrad warned him many of these terrorists keep a Glock near their cock.
As Spencer angrily shouts the word 'nigger' over and over again, you get the impression Baron Cohen knows he's doing this racist piece of shit out of a job and he relishes it. Correctly. Spencer's attempts to use Chinese words is nearly as offensive. Ho Chi Minh City, konnichiwa, and sushi aren't even Chinese! He's told to use his buttocks to intimidate perceived ISIS terror threats which he does by pulling his trousers down, pushing his naked bum to the fore, and shouting USA repeatedly! That'll learn 'em.
When Morrad interviews George W Bush's vice president Dick Cheney he calls him "one of the world's greatest humanitarians" and asks him what was the favourite war of the ones he started. Afghanistan? Iraq 1? Iraq 2? Cheney freely admits to "enjoying" war, he doesn't deny killing 100,000 terrrorists and 700,000 'potential' terrorists, and Baron Cohen can't resist the temptation to make a few Dick'n'Bush jokes before Cheney autographs Morrad's waterboard and spells Dan Quayle's name wrong.
Morrad also pretends to be a Muslim called Abdul (identifiable as such by eating hummus and charming snakes), puts babies in 'suicide diapers', and claims to have survived two beheadings. He gets some gun nut to bite his prosthetic penis, calls the Women's March in San Francsisco "the world's most dangerous terrorist gathering", and asserts with some authority that "37% of lesbians look like Charlie Chaplin". It's sometimes hard to believe any of this could possibly be a set up. Are these people really that stupid? That gullible? That lacking in moral fibre?
It seems so. In one of the most jaw dropping scenes of the whole series he gathers a group of patriots and asks them what they think a quinceanera is. They see the Mexican tradition of having a party for a girl's 15th birthday, and her arrival into womanhood, as a barely concealed front so that Mexican men can drug and rape children.
Luckily, Morrad's got some 'pussy panties' with him. "Close your eyes, touch my pussy panties" he instructs the assembled knuckleheads who all oblige, rubbing Baron Cohen's tracksuited dick covered by a pair of knickers with a fake vagina stitched into them. "It's a little dry but I get the idea" is the assessment of one fondler. So they can further thwart these Mexican rapists they cover their faces in KY jelly, put condoms on their fists, and add Rohypnol to the guacamole. Ain't no party like a mocked up Mexican child rape party.
"I'll blow your Mexican balls off" shouts one of the jerks just before the Feds rock up to find Morrad/Baron Cohen in a mariachi outfit with a unconvincing fake 'tache peeling off and a man wearing a fake vagina and filling the dips with date rape drugs.
Obviously Nira/Baron Cohen laps all this up. He proposes menstrual flag programmes, campaigns for equality for all twenty-four genders, asks a black man if he identifies as white, and asks a white man "how would you feel if your daughter had a black pimp"? This goes down about as well as the time he tells his guest he's reclaimed the word 'paedophile' to mean someone who simply loves children. Nira Cain is a 'proud paedophile' and introduces us to his new book 'Flopsy Finds A Funny Picture' in which Flopsy and her rabbit friends appear in scenes such as "What are Mummy and Daddy Rabbit doing?" and bunnies fellate and masturbate each other to feed their $50 a day carrot habbits. There's even a cartoon bunny bukakke party. What more could you ask for?
I GLAGged willingly at that one but some of the other jokes fell a bit flat. When Nira Cain wears an 'empathy belly' to simulate his partner's regretted pregnancy it all gets a bit too silly. Cain offers to anally insert a child/doll so he can 'give birth' to it and the nurse brings out a canister of WD40 to ease passage from his, hopefully, fake anus. The vision of a baby's head lodged up a liberal's arse is one that will probably stay with me for longer than I'd like it to.
Erran Morrad is an Israeli counter-terrorism expert whose rank changes each episode from Sergeant to Colonel to Brigadier and so on. He looks like an Action Man and marches around with a walk that would have been dismissed by the Ministry of Silly Walks as a bit too much. He wants to arm not just teachers but school children as well. An interview with gun enthusiast, "guns are fun", Philip van Cleave (a man so morally bankrupt that in an interview with Piers Morgan he still looked like the biggest twat) laughs as Morrad blames school shootings on liberals and suggests that as toddlers haven't yet developed a conscience they make very effective killers. 'Kinderguardians' he calls them, and he's invented a range of 'gunimals' so they can transform their toys into highly evolved killing machines in a matter of seconds.
Morrad's guns/toys include the likes of Puppy Pistol, Gunny Rabbit, Uzicorn, Dino-Gun, and BFF (Best Firearm Forever). He's made an instruction video of how to stop 'naughty men' and 'have them take a long nap'. Larry Platt of the American Civil Rights Movement asserts his belief that schools are brainwashing kids into believing that guns are responsible for shooting and that the ant-gun lobby have blood on their hands. Warming to his theme he proposes the idea that Muslims should pray in secret or risk being shot dead and laughs heartily when Morrad says "it's not rape if it's your wife".
Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, to his credit, won't support some of Morrad's crazier ideas but Trent Lott, the former Mississippi senator, and other notable Republican figures go on to both endorse Morrad's murderous plans and rage vehemently against the 'evils' of homosexuality and mental illness. Jason Spencer's contribution to the show was so vile he had to resign after it (so satire can work, Lehrer, even in the most troubling of times). The former member of the Georgia House of Representatives and noted anti-burka campaigner agreed to identify a terrorist hiding beneath a burka using an upskirt selfie. Morrad warned him many of these terrorists keep a Glock near their cock.
As Spencer angrily shouts the word 'nigger' over and over again, you get the impression Baron Cohen knows he's doing this racist piece of shit out of a job and he relishes it. Correctly. Spencer's attempts to use Chinese words is nearly as offensive. Ho Chi Minh City, konnichiwa, and sushi aren't even Chinese! He's told to use his buttocks to intimidate perceived ISIS terror threats which he does by pulling his trousers down, pushing his naked bum to the fore, and shouting USA repeatedly! That'll learn 'em.
When Morrad interviews George W Bush's vice president Dick Cheney he calls him "one of the world's greatest humanitarians" and asks him what was the favourite war of the ones he started. Afghanistan? Iraq 1? Iraq 2? Cheney freely admits to "enjoying" war, he doesn't deny killing 100,000 terrrorists and 700,000 'potential' terrorists, and Baron Cohen can't resist the temptation to make a few Dick'n'Bush jokes before Cheney autographs Morrad's waterboard and spells Dan Quayle's name wrong.
Morrad also pretends to be a Muslim called Abdul (identifiable as such by eating hummus and charming snakes), puts babies in 'suicide diapers', and claims to have survived two beheadings. He gets some gun nut to bite his prosthetic penis, calls the Women's March in San Francsisco "the world's most dangerous terrorist gathering", and asserts with some authority that "37% of lesbians look like Charlie Chaplin". It's sometimes hard to believe any of this could possibly be a set up. Are these people really that stupid? That gullible? That lacking in moral fibre?
It seems so. In one of the most jaw dropping scenes of the whole series he gathers a group of patriots and asks them what they think a quinceanera is. They see the Mexican tradition of having a party for a girl's 15th birthday, and her arrival into womanhood, as a barely concealed front so that Mexican men can drug and rape children.
Luckily, Morrad's got some 'pussy panties' with him. "Close your eyes, touch my pussy panties" he instructs the assembled knuckleheads who all oblige, rubbing Baron Cohen's tracksuited dick covered by a pair of knickers with a fake vagina stitched into them. "It's a little dry but I get the idea" is the assessment of one fondler. So they can further thwart these Mexican rapists they cover their faces in KY jelly, put condoms on their fists, and add Rohypnol to the guacamole. Ain't no party like a mocked up Mexican child rape party.
"I'll blow your Mexican balls off" shouts one of the jerks just before the Feds rock up to find Morrad/Baron Cohen in a mariachi outfit with a unconvincing fake 'tache peeling off and a man wearing a fake vagina and filling the dips with date rape drugs.
So it's a funny show. Some jokes, like the ones about being anally raped, fall a bit flat but its coarseness and its very blunt edge are the trademarks of Baron Cohen and it's what he does best. At times, with the references to Blink 182, Rita Ora, Whiz Khalifa, and Cardi B, it's a bit like Brass Eye for people with a shorter attention span, most of us now, but if it never quite hits the heights of that wonderful show it does give you a LOL, a ROFL, and a WTF every couple of minutes.
It's pertinent too. Former Alabama Republican nominee, accused of sexually assaulting under age girls, agrees that that the state of Alabama has long been famed for its equality and in opposing people like Moore, van Cleave, and Cheney and in helping to get James Spencer removed from public office the show has achieved, even surpassed, its intentions. His subjects confess that they fear America will, in Trump's words, become a 'shithole' if they get rid of fascists, to assert that they believe the #metoo movement's aims are to take over the world and kill all men, to believe they're murdering liberals and women to prevent terrorism, and even to penetrate a showroom dummy of Trump himself.
It's ugly but so is Trump and what he's doing to the world. But it's no longer weird. Not in a world where the POTUS has the IQ of an amoeba, the empathy of a sponge, and the cock of the mushroom character from Super Mario.
This is played for laughs. The real world is, er, real. Each show begins with quotes by JFK, FDR, and Ronald Reagan followed by
one of Trump mocking a disabled person by doing what we Brits of a
certain age call a 'Joey'. Reminding us just how far America, and the world, has fallen.
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