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Anorak News | Character Assassination

Character Assassination

by | 15th, November 2005

‘THE CIA’s World Fact Book describes Kazakhstan thus: “Current issues include: developing a cohesive national identity; expanding the development of the country’s vast energy resources and exporting them to world markets.”

‘And after you’ve milked the goat…’

But there is one other pressing issue affecting life in the land that “extends from the Volga to the Altai Mountains and from the plains in western Siberia to oases and desert in Central Asia”.

The largest of the former Soviet republics in territory, excluding Russia, has a problem: Borat Sagdiyev.

As the Express reports, Borat is the creation of Sacha Baron Cohen, the man who gave the world the Ali G TV character.

And it seems that not only is Borat not all that funny over here, but he’s going down in Kazakhstan as well as Bernard Manning at the Race Relations Board’s annual charity fundraiser.

The government of the landlocked county (border countries: China 1,533 km, Kyrgyzstan 1,051 km, Russia 6,846 km, Turkmenistan 379 km, Uzbekistan 2,203 km) is thinking of suing Cohen for portraying the locals as incestuous drunks.

And it may be worse. As Yerzhan Ashykbayev, a spokesman for the Kazakh Foreign Ministry, says: “We do not rule out that Mr Cohen is serving someone’s political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way.”

Crikey! Could Borat really be in the employ of some shadowy group keen to do the country down, a place “slightly less than four times the size of Texas”?

It is possible. And while the Kazakhstan Republican Guard investigates, we urge you to go to the place and see what it’s like first hand.

And don’t forget to pack your boxing gloves for the national sport of goat punching, and to take along your sister…’



Posted: 15th, November 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink