Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Election Coverage With Borat on Waxing America

11:17pm: Borat -what a weak excuse for a man. This Tsoglin may log off but I am here to play; anyone want to chat?

11:13pm: My staying up any later will not change the outcome of the outstanding races.  Night all.

10:50pm: It appears that the Senate is in the grasp of the Democrats. It is would be a good time to reflect on Tammy Baldwin's victory speech.  Tammy will serve as a member of the majority party for the first time in her Congressional career. I have every confidence that despite the fact that is she is one of the most progressive members of Congress, that she will:

• never insult or demean her Republican colleagues.
• never compromise her commitment to the Second Congressional District.
• forge practical and workable solutions for a nation that craves resolution.

10:14pm: The Democratic successes nationally and in Wisconsin are satisfying.  Now here are some races that would be nice additional wins:

• Gordon Hintz winning the Assembly seat in Oshkosh.
• Steven Kagen beating the mean spirited Gard for the 8th District Congressional seat.
• Tom Reynolds losing his Senate seat, contributing to a Democratic majority in the State Senate.
• The defeat of Dave Zien.

10:01pm  The Republican ascendancy that began with the 1980 election of Ronald Regan and was perfected by the Gingrich Contract with American in 1994 was characterized by:

• A highly partisan, take-no-prisoners approach to working with Democrats.
• Control of party by the right wing, a clear minority of Americans.
• Democratic fearing their own shadow: Dems attributed their losses to liberal policies when it was actually a loss of commitment and sincerity.
• Retreats in subsequent years by Democrats as they failed to feel sincere campaigns in the entire country.

With control of the House over the next two years, Democrats:

• Still need a platform.
• Need to learn the lesson of the defeat of Republican Clay Shaw in Florida: run in every district in the country.

9:36pm  Borat: Your great leader Tom DeLay says this loss is good for Republican Party; it will make his side work harder for 2008. In my country, we say, "Poke in eye with frozen camel ear makes man see better with remaining eye." What I really like is what you call 'spin.' This DeLay and Armey say that Republicans lost only because they had letter 'R' by their name. I must ask, why is letter 'R' such a bad thing?  Your people must be superstitious if they make wise election decision because of dislike for letter.  It is not as though the letter was associated something bad like war, poverty, or bribery.

9:23pm  My fondnesss for Keith Olbermann is no secret.  He continues to provide sound coverage with little bias, giving an honest meaning to the word 'balanced.'  Chris Matthews manages to destroy the integrity of the broadcast on MSNBC.

9:11pm  WISC TV, Channel 3  reporting that the AP is projecting wins for Governor Doyle and Kathleen Falk as AG.  They also suggest that fairness is losing in Wisconsin.  In light of the national trends the projections for Doyle and Falk make sense.

I wonder how long it will take the next generation to overturn the mean-spirited vote on the equality issue. If Fair Wisconsin can be sustained, we can reverse this cruelty that violates all sense of justice and fairness. I hope that Catholics of goodwill continue to struggle with church leaders who fail to understand spiritual generosity.

8:45pm:   Dick Armey, the Republican House majority leader from 1995 to 2003 called the situation "Grim." He went on to claim the Republican Party will be stronger because of this loss;  not if the Dems know what they are doing.  The Republicans will focus on their core right wing issues.  If the Democrats can change the discussion, reset the table, a Republican focus on their core right wing values will further ensure future Democratic success.

8:28pm  Ken Mehlman the chairman of the Republican Party:

• He is talking about the great bipartisan record of the Republican Party.  He mentioned the War in Iraq, No Child Left Behind, and additonal right wing agneda items.  He pledges Republican cooperation if there is a Democtaric majoirty.  He had better understand the bipartisan cooperation will be over a Democratic, not a Republiucan agenada.
• HIs upper lip is stiff.  Republcians are as bad as Democtrats when it comes to waiting for bad news.

8:11pm   Howard Dean is bouncing from channel to channel but his politics are steady. He is doing a fine job:

• He will not be pinned down on a specific timetable for leaving Iraq.  A commitment to withdraw but not a rash commitment.
• He is reinforcing the notion on of a fifty state strategy.  This was a major reason the Dems will do well; it may create a new national Democratic majority.
• He is focused on the bread and butter issues: health care, wages, tax cuts for the rich.  If the DP can do this for the next two years they will have the credibility to take the White House.
• Dean talked about a new civility and bipartisan congressional work.

7:45pm  Phone just rang.  It was Hillary Rodham Clinton calling on behalf of the DNC to remind me to vote. Real.

7:32pm    On election night November, 1994, I turned to a labor leader, Ron Domini, and said, "The Ann Richards loss to young Bush is bigger than Texas.  Bush can now use the governor's office as a launching pad for the White House."   It is important to defeat certain Republicans not just because we do not need them in the local office, but to stop them from launching an effective national campaign.  The defeat of Santorum in Pennsylvania not only gives the Democrats another Senate seat, but it also drags down the right-wingers presidential ambitions.

Of course, we never heard the end of Richard Nixon.

7:26pm     Ken Blackwell the right wing gubernatorial loser in Ohio last fall:

I think homosexuality is a lifestyle, it's a choice, and that lifestyle can be changed.  I think it is a transgression against God's law, God's will. The reality is, again...that I think we make choices all the time. And I think you make good choices and bad choices in terms of lifestyle. Our expectation is that one's genetic makeup might make one more inclined to be an arsonist or might make one more inclined to be a kleptomaniac. Do I think that they can be changed? Yes.

What makes a man so angry? Certainly not his god.

Congratulations to Democrat Governor Ted Strickland elect and in PA Senator-elect Bob Casey over Santorum, (Hopefully his vote will not be critical on choice issues!).

7:09:pm     Borat: In homeland we take women with to run for office, loser and put tin marriage sack. In this instance we deny Kathrine Harris. Perhaps America take her hunting with Dick Cheney.

7:04pm:    Things are looking good for Democrats.  It looks like the Dems have picked up the 8th District in Indiana; won by a conservative Dem, Ellsworth. 

The conservative commentators are having a field day speculating about the prospects of a Democratic majority fractured by their with differences between the liberal Democratic leadership.  It maybe a problem, but it was not as though the Republican moderates did not have a problem with their party run by very scary right wing fanatics.

These same commentators are disturbed that voters are holding Iraq and Bush against moderate Republicans who are loosing.  Tough. A Republican who calls for Rumsfled's resignation a week before the election, after supporting the war for three years will not buy redemption.

6:38pm:   Joe Scarborough is dismissive of a critical House races (Louisville3rd CD - Polls show GOP Congresswoman Anne Northup in a tight race for re-election she faces alternative newspaper publisher Democrat John Yarmuth ) as being  a poor indicator of any kind of Democratic win. Keith Olbermann continues to string together many coherent, consecutive sentences without a script while other commentators are having trouble sans script or TelePrompTer.

Borat: Louisville?  Horse part of America.  Horse mother of National Kazakh drink, Kumis.

Wait, comrade!!!!  I am now convinced, mare is correct from offical link to Kazakhstan Visitor's and Convention Bureau:

The national speciality is kumis, fermented mare's milk. Cafés where this can be ordered are called Kumis-Khana. Refusing it when offered may cause offence. In the steppe and desert regions where camels are bred, the camel's milk, called shubat, is offered to guests.

Eight glasses a day, bubbala.

6:28pm:   Brit Hume is spluttering and stumbling more than usual tonight. He must know something that is bad for the Republicans.

Borat: In glorious homeland nation, to celebrate the end of election we throw not only Jews, but all political commentators and reporters down the well.

5:57pm:  Opening the evening mail. There is a Newsletter from the University of Wisconsin Political Science Department which includes comments from distinguish alumnae. There is commentary from Senator Russ Feingold and Vice President Dick Cheney.  Cheney says:

...To look back on those years in Wisconsin is to draw upon many fine memories-the great intellectual challenges, the warm friendships, and even the birth of my first child.

No mention of the fact that the birth of that child was a conscious decision on Cheney's part to avoid the draft.

Comment from Borat: Is custom in Kazakhstan to celebrate birth of child with discharge of weapon at neighbor's cow. Though many years after daughter's birth, my people envy man who shoot friend in face.

5:45 pm: CBS Evening News. Bob Schiffer reports that exit polls show two significant trends: American believe by a 2:1 margin that national issues are more important than local issues and that President Bush is significantly less popular than he was in each respective state in 2004. You have to wonder what he, Rumsfeld, and Cheney were thinking when they decided to create the need for a war in Iraq.

Over the centuries world leaders, particularly dictators, have engaged their nations in wars to distract from domestic problems, to enhance their own popularity, and to allow for their colleagues to accumulate wealth through the spoils of war.

What were they thinking?

5:00 pm.  Starting no later than 8:00 PM central time, Waxing America will provide running commentary on the election returns, once every thirty minutes.  As a special exclusive we expect to have periodic guest commentary from Borat.

Waxingamerica Demands Bush Grant Borat Interview

Misguided American journalists once again get a Borat-Kazakhstan story wrong. The Associated Press is all over the visit to the United States by the Kazakhstan President, Nursultan Nazarbayev and the inability of Kazakh authorities to deal with the alter ego of Sacha Baron Cohen.

Kazakhs Counter Comic With Ad Campaign :

AP) Gleaming hotels, the region's best pastrami sandwiches and the planet's largest population of wolves: these are things Kazakhs want the world to know about their country -not the outrageous claims of the British comedian who portrays them as primitive and bigots...

...Authorities say the campaign was meant to coincide with President Nursultan Nazarbayev's visit to the United States, where he met with President Bush on Friday. But it also comes as comic Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of a fictional Kazakh reporter known as Borat, was launching a full-length movie based on the character.

...The homophobic, misogynistic, English-mangling Borat - who portrays Kazakhs as addicted to horse urine, fond of shooting dogs and viewing rape and incest as respectable hobbies -has mortified the government of this former Soviet republic...

Meanwhile, on Friday, Borat was denied access to the White House while Nazarbayev slummed with United States President George W. Bush.

The refusal of Bush minions to admit this responsible journalist to the White House grounds is inexcusable.

Borat Disarms Entire Nation

To prove that all it takes is one lunatic to turn a country upside down, we need go no further than "journalist"  Borat and his impact on beleaguered Kazakhstan. Borat! Meet Kazakhstan's real-life roving TV reporter. And he's not happy:

Suddenly, the war between one comedian and an entire nation-state is getting personal.

Sacha Baron Cohen's creation of Borat, a Jew-baiting, sister-snogging, horse-urine-drinking Kazakh television reporter, has so angered the former Soviet republic that it is fighting back with every means at its disposal - including a local celebrity who calls himself Borat's brother.

So, as Baron Cohen's mockumentary, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, opens in the US and heads to the UK in November, perhaps the strangest feud in the history of light entertainment grows ever more bizarre.

To date, Borat - famous, among other indelicacies, for singing "Throw the Jew Down the Well" at a US country and western bar, and arriving at a film premiere on a wagon pulled by four peasant women - has provoked the Kazakh authorities to ban his website, threaten legal action, make formal protests (though they deny that they will raise the matter with President George Bush) and buy airtime on US television to correct the portrayal of their countrymen as primitives.

Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat's alter ego, (alias Ali G and Jean Girard, Talladega Nights) has managed to ridicule goats, peasants, women, drinking horse urine, a national sport involving chasing a goat's head and just about everything else profound in Kazakhstan.

Now that he has throughly befuddled and confused the Kazakh government, one can only conclude that there is an important moral or lesson here from which both the British and US governments can learn something.

Perhaps the US, Britain and Kazakhstan should recall the old Chinese proverb:

Know your enemy as you know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat.

Life Imitating Art; Sasha May Be Art, but is Sacha?

We fooled around with pictures of Sasha Cohn and Sacha Baron Cohen a few weeks ago, Olympics Over. Sacha/Sasha Cohen/Cohn and now comes this report:

Caption, my caption

...In a New York Times photo caption with a picture of American figure skater Sasha Cohen, she was called "Sasha Baron." That would indicate someone had a brain cramp and was thinking of Sacha Baron Cohen, the British comedian best known for his Ali G character...

.

British Government Disavows Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat

Today the British Government disavowed Sacha Baron Cohen, and peerless Kazakh journalist, Borat-- I think. (my observations in italics):

British Ambassador to Kazakhstan Comments on Sacha Baron Cohen

Paul Brummel, new British ambassador to Kazakhstan, has made some comments today, January 31, at a press conference in Almaty, responding to a question on British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen who often performs as a fictional Kazakh journalist, Borat, Kazakhstan Today reports.

I wonder who was the Kazakh journalist questioning the ambassador.

In particular, the ambassador has said that "what Sacha Baron Cohen is trying to do is not to represent Kazakhstan in a bad light through his eccentric antics, but to show prejudices still existing in the British society." It is first of all directed against the British themselves, Mr. Brummel said.

"(Borat)... is not to represent Kazakhstan in a bad light through his eccentric antics" Oh? I wonder what he would say if he was trying to portray them in a bad light?

"trying to show...prejudices still existing in British society."  If he was trying show British prejudices, wouldn't Borat focus on British dental hygiene or the Queen's pocketbooks rather than Kazakhs drinking camels milk? or golfing with goats heads? Ok, polo, not golf.

Mr. Brummel said that "we should think more about how vague are ideas of the British about what is Kazakhstan and how little they know about it. It is our common task: for me as for a diplomat and for you as journalists to show to the British and to the Western community what is Kazakhstan in 2006 and how much it is different from how Borat is presenting it," - he said.

Huh?

In his view, "looking at Borat, anyone who has the slightest idea about what is Kazakhstan will for sure realize that this character has nothing to do with Kazakhstan."

I think this story was written by Borat.

Borat: Sacha Baron Cohen-An Olddate

Sorry, but I cannot manufacture Borat updates when there is nothing new. To quench the thirst of those in need, let's have an 'olddate' and go back to a New Yorker article from September 20, 2004.  Talk of the Town decided to check with Kazakhstan officials to verify the assertions of that country's foremost journalist Borat. 

It turned out falsehoods, and many others, have been spread by Borat,:

Roman Vassilenko, the press secretary for the Embassy of Kazakhstan, wants to clear up a few misconceptions about his country. Women are not kept in cages. The national sport is not shooting a dog and then having a party. You cannot earn a living being a Gypsy catcher. Wine is not made from fermented horse urine. It is not customary for a man to grab another man’s khrum. “Khrum” is not the word for testicles.

Like you , I was disappointed to learn that Borat , at times, was less than reliable.  However:

Travel guides mention a Kazakh sport called kokpar, a precursor of polo. When Vassilenko was asked about it, he hesitated, then explained, “That’s the one where a goat, a dead goat”—a headless dead goat—“is, um, being held as a sort of a prize. And then one rider has it, and he has to run away with it from others who seek to catch it and snatch it from him.” And then they have a party.

On the American Journalism Scorecard for Accuracy in Reporting:

Borat 62%

Ann Coulter 19%  (She is a good speller.)