I am reminded of that great motion picture "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb". That blackest of black comedies undoubtedly quieted the hysteria of the times about the possible thermonuclear annihilation of humanity.
Perhaps "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" will relax the silly uptightness of multi-cultural cultural equivalence that inhibits rational criticism of barbarism.
(Mark Steyn is, of course, the best political commentator in English these days, as well as the funniest. His "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" tells it like it is. (I doubt that the Speaker apparent and her hench-persons will be able to engineer a takeover by the Kofi Annan mob. At least, not right away.))
I report and link. You decide. - J :)
From a Free Times [[Columbia, SC]] article, Can Borat Save Western Civilization?:
Can Borat Save Western Civilization? [\] [[the usual suspects | Michael Graham | 11/08/06]]
The two most important people in America today don't work in Congress. They work in comedy. [\] Not that the two [[(Congress and comedy)]] are mutually exclusive.
N.B. Will Rogers remark on politics and comedy seems particularly timely this week: "The problem with political jokes is that too many of them get elected."
Mark Steyn's book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is far more profound than anything Nancy Pelosi has to say. And Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan will do more to save America than any plodding pseudo-documentary by Michael Moore.
Plus, unlike Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell and every episode of Studio 60, Steyn and Cohen are actually funny. [\] Two comedians. Neither of them Americans. But they may be the last hope of Western civilization.
Yes, things are that bad.
You'd know just how bad if you'd read Steyn's hilarious yet horribly depressing America Alone. [\] Because Europeans have stopped breeding (17 European countries are at what demographers call "lowest low" birth rates), Steyn notes that "Islam is now the principal supplier of new Europeans." The result will be "Eurabia," a continent that, within our lifetime, will have Muslim majorities in some countries (Spain, the Netherlands) and sizeable Muslim minorities in others (France, Great Britain).
This would merely be interesting if the second and third generation of European Muslims were doing what other immigrants have done and integrated into European society. But they aren't.
Steyn again: "Seven percent of British Muslims consider their primary identity to be British, 81 percent consider it to be Muslim. … Second- and third-generation European Muslims feel far more fiercely Islamic than their parents and grandparents."
Which is why Muslim populations in über-liberal nations like Sweden, Canada and Germany are demanding -- and getting -- recognition of Sharia law and Islamic courts. It explains why England's foreign minister is under political assault for refusing to meet with Muslim women wearing veils. And why France, where 2,500 cops have been injured fighting an intifada in their own streets this year, cannot fight Islamic extremism abroad.
The true enemy of the West, in Steyn's opinion, is our slavish devotion to one virtue over all ‹ tolerance. We don't have the cultural cojones to say to the Islamic world, "Sorry, but we just won't accept burkas, burning books about Mohammad and beating homosexuals to death. We're right and you're wrong."
And then, just when Western civilization is about to tolerate itself to death, who should appear? Borat the Magnificent!
Borat is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and yes, it's one of the most disgusting, too. I assume you know the premise: Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen plays a bumbling Kazakh TV reporter interviewing people, prominent and obscure, who think Borat is a real person -- one who just happens to be utterly clueless. Borat says and does things that civilized people find wildly inappropriate (calling a panel of feminists "chicky" and "sweetheart" was one of my favorites) to test the limits of our tolerance.
[…] What Borat mocks is tolerance itself. Borat screams anti-Semitic rants or roams into a woman's dining room with a baggie of his own feces, and the first reaction of the good, multicultural Americans around him is to find a way to accommodate, to understand, to (as one clueless woman in the film did) be fascinated by our cultural differences.
Watching Borat, we begin to wonder if there are any Americans who haven't achieved total PC wussification. What we want is what Mark Steyn wants: for someone with the cultural confidence to stand up and say, "What the h%%%'s wrong with you, boy?" and throw Borat out on his ear. Three cheers for intolerance!
One day in the near future, some city council in San Francisco or Detroit will consider allowing sharia courts. Normal Americans who, alas, would never read a book like America Alone will glance at the nightly news and see earnest Muslims insisting that all women ‹ not just Muslims must cover their heads in public places. And these post-Borat Americans will laugh. "What is this, a put-on?" they'll wonder.
The Islamists will be laughed out of the room. Western civilization will be saved. All because a couple of funny guys were willing to tell the truth. [\] Proving yet again that, in comedy, timing is everything.
Let us know what you think: Email Suspects@aol.com or editor@free-times.com. [\] Usual Suspects Archives [My ellipses and emphasis]
