The Kazakh strikes back
Bad news for Borat, but the government of Kazakhstan is shutting him down.
For those unfamiliar with the controversy, here’s a primer: The Kazakhstan government is none too happy with Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat, a semi-retarded, Jew-hating, sexist Kazhakstani journalist. Basically Borat goes around and lets others expose their ignorance, but in a way that’s not exactly flattering to everybody’s favorite central Asian country. It’s pure satire, but being an ex-Soviet republic, satire’s apparently an art form still in its infancy there.
After Kazakhstan denounced Borat, Baron Cohen responed with a video on Borat’s Web site, borat.kz — note the .kz.
Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat in his “Da Ali G Show” and last month he used the character’s Web site www.borat.kz to respond sarcastically to legal threats from the Central Asian state’s Foreign Ministry.
A government-appointed organization regulating Web sites that end in the .kz domain name for Kazakhstan confirmed on Tuesday it had suspended Cohen’s site.
“We’ve done this so he can’t badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name,” Nurlan Isin, President of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies, told Reuters. “He can go and do whatever he wants at other domains.”
Please tell me I’m not the only one who saw this coming. I think everybody must have. It’s been a while since Baron Cohen issued his response, and frankly I’m surprised it’s taken this long.
December 13th, 2005 at 11:43 am
This is always a great source for a daily Borat fix: http://www.boratonline.co.uk/
December 13th, 2005 at 1:04 pm
Jagshemash!
December 13th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
In Soviet Russia, top level domain serves you!