Borat and Haman

It's safe to be anti anti-Semitic only in the USA. Maybe Israel. Maybe. Try it in France and you'll get put on trial, like the late Oriana Fallaci. So it’s odd to hear America slammed as, in any way, anti-Semitic. More than odd. Nuts. That’s what Sacha Cohen slash Borat seems to think he needs to do. He told Rolling Stone that the sort of anti-Semitism he found -- or instigated -- in an Arizona bar was what leads to the Holocaust.

Hmm. I haven't seen the movie. Haven’t been to one in years. I’m too good for them. But I just know, as I just know so many things, that Borat is not about America. It's about humans. As I've been given to understand, so many of the dupes in the movie shine -- or so I would interpret it. They are patient and polite -- that is, they are virtuous. We must be kind to innocuous fools. The danger is that we will be soft with evil fools. That's where wisdom comes in -- knowing the appropriate action for the given time.

In contrast, the brash antics of young Cohen pale to a pastel yellow, when we remember that he could have been offensive in some other country, to his peril. One wonders why he doesn't develop an anti-Moslem character. Well, no -- one actually does not wonder. No doubt it would be just as hilarious -- up to the point he was killed. Recall Robert Redeker, compelled to go into hiding because he criticized the intolerance of Islam. Recall poor Denmark of the radioactive cartoons. Irony is apparently lost not only on the Moslems, but weirdly on the very clever and funny Cohen as well.

The movie is, I’m informed, a road trip through America, but it's not about America. It's about people. This is such a fundamental thing, yet it's often missed. I’ve made an observation about hard-left liberals, that is virtually diagnostic. They will, eventually, inevitably formulate some version of the sentence, "Americans are bad" -- some negative generality. If I’m feeling sociable I’ll ask, "Don't you mean people are bad?" "No! Americans!" The moderate, or sane liberals can be corrected. The goats separate themselves from the sheep.

Young Sacha was as yet unborn in the ‘60s, the salad days of today’s self-important gray eminences. It cannot be the balding semi-senescent cohort of baby boomers who swell the ticket sales of his movie film. The social content, if any, of the movie cannot be the draw. It’s a Jackass thing, and it’s a michael moore thing: over-the-top stunts combined with extreme social awkwardness. Hmm. That hardly seems polite. Not actually very virtuous. We may be amused, but we disapprove. (Yes, I’m the Queen.)

The difference between the prudes of today, and of yesteryear, is that we are right. The danger is not just coming, but here. The slippery slope of smutty slop has become a sheer escarpment, and the thin edge of the wedge has pried loose an avalanche of fecal matter.

The world must have its Borats -- with their misplaced talents and skewed allegiances. They'll always be with us, like orgies and abortions. But it makes one wonder. Maybe free speech ain’t always so good? Likewise the world will always have its Hamans -- Haman the Agagite? -- from the book of Ester? … remember? (He tried to get all the Jews killed. Sheesh. Read a book, will you?) We had thought the Agagites, congenital enemies of Israel, were a people swallowed into the dust. Seems not. Rather, their seed has spread across the continents. And to find the very descendants of the patriarch Levi -- as Cohen would be -- silent before such great evil, while picking at the mote in the eye of a dearest friend … well, is this right?

Not so much.

J