The great and good of Kazakhstan are getting tired of having to clear up wild misconceptions about their republic. They are tired of having to insist that shooting a dog and then having a party is not a favourite national pastime and of denying that their wine is made of fermented horse urine and that women are kept in cages.
They are so frustrated at the bad image that they believe the comedian behind such fictitious claims, Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G), is making through his spoof Kazakh television presenter Borat that they are threatening legal action.
A Kazakh foreign ministry spokesperson, Yerzhan Ashykbayev, said on Monday: ”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.”
Borat, who touts himself as the second-best-known television presenter in the former Soviet republic, has been making jokes at the expense of the citizens of Kazakhstan for five years. In the United States, he persuaded officials to observe a 10-minute silence in memory of a massacre that never happened and caused controversy when he got regulars at a bar to join in a spoof anti-Semitic Kazakh folk song.
But it was Borat’s appearance at the annual MTV Europe Music Awards show in Lisbon earlier this month that has really upset the foreign ministry.
The character arrived in an ”Air Kazakh” propeller plane controlled by a one-eyed pilot clutching a vodka bottle. Later he described an all-woman band as ”international singing prostitutes” and said it was brave to have Madonna — ”a genuine transvestite” — on the show.
Kazakh politicians and diplomats have had to stress repeatedly that Borat is nothing to do with them. — Guardian Unlimited Â