Borat Gets Banned From The White House

Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan is already being frothed about so much by wild-eyed movie critics that we get the feeling it can't live up to all the hype, but at least Borat's trying.

Borat - or Sacha Baron Cohen, as his Mum and former co-star Natasha Kaplinsky probably call him - yesterday attempted to get into the White House to meet George Bush, the day before he started negotiations with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, to invite him to a screening of the Borat movie. Weirdly enough Borat wasn't allowed into the White House, probably because George Bush is more of a Dirty Sanchez fan.

The bad blood between Kazakhstan and Borat, the funny Kazakhstan foreigner who does funny stuff in the new movie Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan, is as long as it is disarmingly odd. It all started back when Borat hosted the MTV Europe Awards last year where - inbetween talking at length about Madonna's testicles - Borat managed to get Kazakhstan so angry that the Kazakhstan government threatened to sue him, followed by Kazakhstan killing Borat's Kazakhstan-registered website.

After that, all went quiet until the forthcoming release of Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan got the Kazakhstan government in enough of a tizzy to go and cry to George Bush about how the movie made Kazakhstan look like a bit of a shitheap. And that's why Borat yesterday went to the White House, as Reuters reports:

Secret Service agents turned away British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as the boorish, anti-Semitic journalist, when he tried to invite "Premier George Walter Bush" to a screening of his upcoming movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." Also invited to the screening: O.J. Simpson, "Mel Gibsons" and other "American dignitaries." Cohen's stunt was timed to coincide with an official visit by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is scheduled to meet with Bush on Friday.

Speaking shortly after his refusal into the White House, Borat said:

"If there is one more item of Uzbek propaganda claiming that we do not drink fermented horse urine, give death penalty for baking bagels, or export over 300 tonnes of human pubis per year, then we will be left with no alternative but to commence bombardment of their cities with our catapults."

However shamelessly Sacha Baron Cohen - last seen being sort of OK in Talladega Nights - is promoting the Borat movie, and however needlessly upset the Kazakhstan government is getting about it all, we can only be thankful that Borat hasn't chosen to release a Me Julie-style duet with Shaggy again. Now that would be really offensive.

Read more:

White House Turns Away Kazakh Reporter Borat - Reuters

[story by Stuart Heritage]