nasza_maggie
14.11.05, 15:26
uk.news.yahoo.com/14112005/80/kazakh-govt-threatens-comedian-court.html
Kazakh govt threatens to take comedian to court
Monday November 14, 01:41 PM
ASTANA (Reuters) - Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry threatened legal action on
Monday against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who wins laughs by portraying the
central Asian state as a country populated by drunks who enjoy cow-punching
as a sport.
Baron Cohen, who portrays a spoof Kazakh television presenter Borat in
his "Da Ali G Show", has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan, the world's ninth
largest country yet still little known to many in the West.
Baron Cohen appears to have drawn official Kazakh ire after he hosted the
annual MTV Europe Music Awards show in Lisbon earlier this month as Borat,
who arrived in an Air Kazakh propeller plane controlled by a one-eyed pilot
clutching a vodka bottle.
"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," Kazakh
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev told a news briefing.
"We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind."
He declined to elaborate.
Cohen's earlier jokes about the Central Asian state include claims that the
people would shoot a dog and then have a party, and that local wine was made
from fermented horse urine.
"We view Mr. Cohen's behaviour at the MTV Europe Music Awards as utterly
unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is
completely incompatible with ethics and civilised behaviour," Ashykbayev
said.
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Hate to say I told you so.....