From "Sacha Baron Cohen: This Time He’s Serious/Reviving his Borat character and playing the political activist Abbie Hoffman, the actor feels he 'had to ring the alarm bell and say that democracy is in peril this year'" by Maureen Dowd (NYT).
October 17, 2020
"Mr. Baron Cohen... wrote his thesis on 'the Black-Jewish alliance' and identity politics in the Civil Rights movement. So he was primed to play the puckish Abbie Hoffman."
"'Essentially, he was trying to be a stand-up comedian,' Mr. Baron Cohen said of the man who co-founded the Yippies and preached flower power. 'He was very influenced by Lenny Bruce and he realized that if he could make people laugh, he could get them engaged in the cause.'... [Aaron] Sorkin, who wrote and directed the Chicago 7 film, said that the day Mr. Baron Cohen shot his scene on the witness stand reminded him of the day Jack Nicholson shot his courtroom scene in 'A Few Good Men,' noting, 'Everyone wanted to watch; 120 extras didn’t care that the camera wasn’t on them, they stayed to watch.'
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70 comments:
Why is it that people of Ann’s generation are still living in the 60’s?
At some point, Christians stop stopping minority-Jews toward suicide.
Many many Jews smarter than I have pointed this out in disparate ways. That don't interest Althouse here now though I presume. No clicks.
Democracy is in peril, only one party in America is trying to alter the foundations of this country in order to secure permanent power.
Hint: it isn't Trump.
Allowing Biden and his handlers the levers of power will catapult us toward that end.
Vote Trump to attempt to stem the rising tide of leftist totalitarianism.
Oh, it’s in peril this year.
I assume he's concerned that the political party that has:
embraced weaponizing the federal government, law enforcement and intelligence communities against their political opponents;
supporting and funding political violence in the streets;
Encouraging and facilitating corruption via politicians families, charitable organizations and pay to play schemes
is in danger of losing a free and fair election is a what is a peril to Democracy.
I haven't read the article so I may be wrong. But to be honest we all know I'm not.
The best joke of all time might have been shifted from "Honey, I forgot to duck" to "Could you imagine what I would be like if I drank [booze]."
Trump has now nearly superceded Reagan joke-wise.
Oh I forgot to add.
A political party that supports racial discrimination.
I consider it a slander to declaim "Kurt Cobain committed suicide."
If you don't/won't/can't see the humor in that, then you don't know humor.
These dirty fucks the Althouse's amongst trust declaim anything to help their tribe.
This era of no accountability will soon end.
Hint to celebs who talk politics: if possible, try not to be more loathsome than the people you are attacking.
Aaron Sorkin's politics have been found wanting. His complaint is that it is the end of democracy. Too cute.
He’s right, democracy is in peril. We have a guy who has been compromised by the ChiComs leading in the polls right now.
If democracy truly were in peril, I would not look to Sascha Baron Cohen to save it or even to ring the alarm bell. Some of his skits are funny though.
If democracy truly were in peril, I would not look to Sascha Baron Cohen to save it or even to ring the alarm bell. Some of his skits are funny though.
Geeze, another effort to lionize a total waste of space and oxygen thief.
These guys are really, really going to miss Trump. Luckily for them, however, even if Trump loses he isn't going away. Unlike Hillary!, who also didn't go away, he will be much more entertaining (and effective) as a critic of the winner if, as our betters assure us, it will be Sleepy Joe.
Zinoviev has gone down the memory hole, but his show trial under Stalin might be a better fit for someone of Cohen's comedic talents. Maybe even a large scale production like Reds that encompasses Zinoviev's trip with Lenin to the Finland Station up to the moment where Zinoviev's histrionics required that poor Soviet security agent to shoot him on the spot instead of at the appointed place of execution. Kind of a Borat moment there with a chance for lots of comic mugging...Anyway there are show trials and there are show trials.
Sacha Baron Cohen needs to really get into his role by taking an overdose of phenobarbital.
Sigh. Democracy in peril. I have never seen so much anticipation and new coverage about voting in my entire life. "Where is my ballot?" posts all over social media, nearly everyone blabbing about where to register, make sure you register, yada yada yada....
I do not recall this kind of passion over voting when Obama or Hillary was running, do you? Seems to me Trump is one of the most inspiring leader in years with regards to getting out the vote. OTOH, it could be simple human nature: voting someone OUT is more satisfying than voting someone IN.
How irrelevant can one get? Borat was 15 years ago, and absolutely no one was clamoring for a retread sequel. Likewise, who remembers or cares about Hoffman? A string of meaningless protests across a sad mess of a life.
How many people who watch the movie will have actually lived through the era. Abbie Hoffman was a dick.
God bless Sorkin for making wads of cash from brain-dead liberals who deified him.
He is smarmy, pretentious, and highly unlikeable.
His dialog hurts my ears...he writes as if he's being paid by the word.
Nobody in the history of the world has ever spoken the way he writes.
He is a well-paid liberal hack.
God bless him...
I, for one, wonder what the kids of the 2030s will think of the last few decades of supposedly historical films, which are just badly made leftist propaganda. From Stone's "JFK" to this steaming hot mess, the BS level has been ridiculous. And they haven't even been watchable, enjoyable movies.
The Soviet film makers would have been sent to a gulag or a death camp for telling the truth. As far as I can tell, the leftist film makers peddling this crapola do so solely because they are willing supporters of an equally vile ideology, even though they would only lose the support of their like-minded friends for telling the truth.
Phil 314 said...How many people who watch the movie will have actually lived through the era. Abbie Hoffman was a dick.
I liked his sense of humor back in the late sixties and liked Steal This Book. However, I knew nothing about him as a person. I did meet Jerry Rubin (before he turned capitalist) and he was really a dick.
Democracy is indeed emperiled this year, witnessed eloquently by defaced and toppled public monuments, incendiary attacks on the duly empowered defenders of civil order, nighttime broken glass (such did also portend the eclipse of democracy in Germany), beatings and murders of Republican voters, and heaps of lawful ballots disposed of as mere trash.
"Why is it that people of Ann’s generation are still living in the 60’s?"
Go back any further in time and you have to deal with either pro-US wartime history, or FDR's mishandling of the Depression, or Wilson, who nobody on the left ever wants discussed. And anyone who remembers that stuff from their own life is really, really old now.
Go forward a few years and you're either talking Carter (ugh!) or the Gipper (yay!), the fall of the Soviet Union (yay!), then blowjobs in the White House (Ha, ha!). And everyone under 65 remembers all that. Not a lot of support for the Left in any of that.
The past 20 years have been dominated by Islamic terror, with a messy story nobody wants to touch for fear of violent retribution. And now we're facing a Chinese pandemic and Chinese imperialism, more unpleasant subjects.
The 60's are a sweet spot, a decade of well-publicized anti-US sentiment at home and abroad, with an unpopular war in Vietnam and martyrdom of a Democrat President, his brother, and a Civil Rights leader. The decade is ripe for historical revisionism in the arts in support of Leftist ideology. So it is a fine place to life, for leftists.
I've never met a respectable black civil rights activist who didn't despise the Yippies and the Weathermen. Sixties white trust-fund brats with deep-rooted sex issues burning other people's neighborhoods down. Sounds about right for Cohen.
I wonder who plays Alex Rackley in the movie.
democracy IS in peril this year; just not the way He thinks
A British s****k entertaining a nation of s****ks (the UK) by ridiculing the USA.
Cheap unfunny jokes for a nation of cheapskates. (Just ask US waiter-ing people how Brits tip.)
The UK is so class-ridden that the people at the bottom turn to the USA for people they can ridicule.
This shmuck is so incompetent he has to resort to a costume to get a laugh.
Whenever you hear handwringing about "Democracy", change the word to Democrats and you'll understand the real concern.
The 'Black-Jewish Alliance' is a figment of Jewish imagination.
Unfortunately, Joe Smith, he is not the only person in the history of the world to have spoken like this. I know, for I have had the misfortune of sitting through episodes of the Gilmore Girls. You want to talk pretentious, wordy, dialogue...
Unfortunately, Joe Smith, he is not the only person in the history of the world to have spoken like this. I know, for I have had the misfortune of sitting through episodes of the Gilmore Girls. You want to talk pretentious, wordy, dialogue...
Gosh, another elite Jewish Hollywooder standing up. That'll definitely put Trump in his place.
William:
Cohen is more like Karl Pauker than Zinoviev.
Stalin's clown. Would do imitations of Stalin's ex-cronies pleading for him to spare their lives. Stalin would laugh uproariously and order Pauker to do more imitations. Pauker was only to happy to oblige.
Until Stalin had him shot.
FDR used the term Economic Royalists back in 1937. Time to revive it:
“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.”
"The 60's are a sweet spot, a decade of..."
Also:
The music!
The mod fashions
The hippie movement
LSD
The TV shows that everyone watched
Pop Art... Op Art...
@AA
"Also:"
...you could stay out all day until the street lights came on.
No cell phones. No seatbelts. No bike helmets. Doors rarely locked. Didn't have to X-ray Halloween candy. Top-20 music was soul, instrumental, rock, Sinatra...
And yes, I was there and I remember it because I was too young to take drugs : )
The 'Black-Jewish Alliance' is a figment of Jewish imagination.
Unrequited love.
They were fucking Communists. They didn't give a shit about democracy.
"The 60's are a sweet spot, a decade of..."
Assassinations: JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK....
To reiterate a lost comment (Blogger seems really buggy today):
Cohen seems to hate America and Americans and yet continues to make lots of money here...
Same could be said of Sorkin.
Watched it last night. Amazing! Cohen-Oscar buzz. Loved it. Definitely not for the crew here though.
Yeah I loved the 60s too. Finally, a girl didn't have to have this fancy, rigid, sprayed-up hairdo. (Or heavy makeup.)
Just let your hair grow! The natural look..guys loved it! Win-win!
One thing about Sorkin, he's a hard core recycler...
Sorkinisms
I suspect this one will be no different...
What makes some AA posts generate extra whining comments?
He was of a type, Hoffman. The smart-ass red-diaper American Jew who was taught from infancy that he was smarter, funnier, and morally superior to shkotsim like me. And who weren't reluctant to tell you so. I'm reminded of the formulation, put forth by more than one historian of the Bolshevik movement, that "whereas not many Jews were Bolsheviks, it is equally true that many Bolsheviks were Jews." Hoffman fit right in with those of the latter category.
RE: "still living in the 60's"
I wish I could remember where I read it, but there is a good reason why humans tend to get stuck on the culture that we experienced in our 20's - at least Western middle-class types. We make so many monumental decisions during that time such as choosing a partner, a college major, our careers, what city to live in. We are adults but may not be burdened with children and serious work responsibilities yet, thus can devote time to the latest music or cultural trends. The culture around us as young adults makes a deep impression in a way that later experiences may not.
well sorkin did prove that zuckerberg was a jerk, about 10 years late,
Do women's sizes mean anything? I was under the impression clothing companies pick sizes for marketing/sales purposes not informational.
I can guarantee that my "Frankenstein, Part II" is better than this "Chicago 7" movie.
Who cares about the Yippies and the Hippies?
Titus: "Watched it last night. Amazing! Cohen-Oscar buzz. Loved it. Definitely not for the crew here though"
So true.
I, as an example, tuned completely out of Hollywood/Oscar self love when they gave a convicted pedophile/drugger & sodomizer of children a standing ovation before a world wide audience.
I can, however, see how that might entice you and readering to continue supporting them.
You can say all you want about the 60s - fashion, music, dope, etc. - but it was defined by Vietnam and the Pill. And not in that order.
Abbie Hoffman, like so many other sad people of that day, was profoundly selfish and not really interested in other people. He was very very excited about his own views of his moral superiority, but at a Sheldon Cooper level, at best. In other words, at the level of an excitedly-pleased-with-himself- autistic-friendless clown. Sad!
One imagines that his parents were either (a) incredibly selfish and cold-hearted people too, and not surprised at how cold-hearted and selfish their child turned out to be or (b) were aghast.
Poor little Baron-Cohen will likely never understand this comment, trust me. His brother the neuroscientist might be able to, but who knows. The neuro-scientists of today are not what they used to be.
Why is the tag 'maureen dowd' not capitalized?
Is it because she's a terrible person, unworthy of acknowledging her humanity?
: )
Tina Trent
I wonder who plays Alex Rackley in the movie.
Which brings forth a bunch of connections for me. Alex Rackley was a Black Panther whom the Panthers killed in New Haven for allegedly being a police informant. Current information is that he wasn't an informant. Not an informant, but still sacrificed for the Revo, as poet Roque Dalton was in El Salvador several years later. Bobby Seale, in New Haven at the time of Alex Rackley's murder, went on trial for his murder, and found innocent. Bunch of demonstrations. Abbie on the front lines, oh yeah.
One reason for my negative opinion of the Black Panthers is my finding out, decades after the fact, about the murder of Betty Van Patter in the Bay Area. As I had known some members of her family, though haven't seen them for decades, this murder- apparently at the hands of the Black Panthers- was not trivia for me. Note that one of the links has Bobby Seale giving his opinion on her murder.
This century a childhood friend married a guy from New Haven. He's been a good partner for her. I found him to be quite the storyteller- as is his wife. I once ran across his sister's obituary. Turned out that back in the day she had been a member of the Black Panthers. As she was from New Haven, I wonder what she knew about Alex Rackley's murder. I haven't asked her brother.
CARING ABOUT THE FACTS
Abbie Hoffman committed suicide at 53.
Some life, if you feel the need to check out 30 years early, it didn't go as planned.
Not impressed with the dude. He was a fraudulent court jester -- and when he finally realized it, well..........let's just say he had an unhappy ending.
Bay Area Guy: "Abbie Hoffman committed suicide at 53."
You would to if Amy Carter insisted upon hanging out with you for a significant amount of time.
RichardJohnson: interesting stuff. There's no statute of limitations on murder.
This post is incomplete without the video where Trump quickly sees through Baron-Cohen’s Alii G schtick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP5ElraFHHE&feature=emb_logo
I'm with gilbar on this. It irks when a Brit gone Hollywood, married to an Aussie, who's done very well in this country gets self-righteous about who American elect. Who does he think he is. Go moan about Brexit and Boris Johnson and maybe show some fucking respect to the country that's made you such a star. May his "moral courage," his injection of his principles into his professional life, cost him.
One imagines that his parents were either (a) incredibly selfish and cold-hearted people too, and not surprised at how cold-hearted and selfish their child turned out to be or (b) were aghast.
I don't think his family was that different from other 1940s/1950s families. Hoffman was bipolar. He was unruly and rebellious in high school and when the 60s came around they gave him an outlet for his abundant energies. His parents may have recognized that he as a troubled soul and worried about him.
Someone should write about the Sixties/Seventies generation and manic depression. Phil Ochs was also bipolar and a suicide, and there were others.
Richard Dolan said...
These guys are really, really going to miss Trump....
10/17/20, 12:04 PM
Not so sure about that; you will be reading how happy people are that the chocolate ration will be increased to 20 grams a week!
Whenever anyone talks about how great a given decade was and others how bad it was, all I hear in my mind is Charles Dickens “it was the best of times, the worst of times...”.
I learn so much from Hollywood spoon feeding
Oh hey look it’s another bullshit political movie lionizing the Progressive Left! This edition features radicals who wanted to overthrow the government because they were bored, spoiled, self-worshipping rich college kids. Also, war is bad.
That’s it. That’s the movie. Just saved you 12 bucks and two hours of your life.
While I was a hippie cum radical in the late 60's, I grew out of it.
There are at least 2 things that annoy my about Baron Cohen: 1) A foreigner mocking his guest country, or taking partisan sides in his guest country; 2) the one-sided nature of his targeting.
When I worked in Latin America, I was careful to not take sides in the political debates. I was comfortable being a sounding board for those who chose to express their political opinions to me, but I didn't solicit those opinions. In addition, I was very careful to not criticize their country or to make negative comparisons with the US. It's their country, not mine, and they know a lot more about it than I do. I would add that I heard very little criticism of the US.
There are numerous comic targets on the left. Such as the white BLM/Antifa activists calling a black who disagrees with them a racist. Such as the sweet young thing in NYC, living in her parent's properties that are worth millions, trashing businesses in the name of "the people." Such as Antifa justifying their street violence- a tactic right out of Hitler's playbook- as "fighting fascism." Such as those propertied people who have no problem with the "protesters" trashing properties until the "protesters" trash THEIR property.
If Baron Cohen ever had the balls to mock some of the above comic targets on the left,he might deserve some respect.
Just read yet another article about a Trump supporter, this time a young woman, being beaten for....showing she's a Trump supporter. This has gone on for years now. Not to mention the corrupt FBI/CIA Obama administration and the Media/Academia Machine that have been working feverishly, non-stop over the past 4 years to create a coup and remove this President.
But Aaron Sorkin and CelebDems keep singing, clone-like, about the end of Democracy that Trump is creating.
It would be as if I bust into your home, shoot you in the face, then go to the media and decry our growing murder rate.
As I've often remarked, it's a sad irony of history that the groups who have been the biggest victims of statism (Jews, Blacks, women, Gays, people in the arts) fall into line like obedient Eloi whenever the State beckons; and will always support the more statist candidate in any election. It's like some collective Stockholm Syndrome. Instapundit yesterday quoted Dennis Prager on the Jews:
“Despite their secularism, Jews may be the most religious ethnic group in the world. The problem is that their religion is rarely Judaism; rather it is every ‘ism’ of the Left. These include liberalism, socialism, feminism, Marxism and environmentalism. Jews involved in these movements believe in them with the same ideological fervor and same suspension of critical reason with which many religious people believe in their religion. It is therefore usually as hard to shake a liberal Jew’s belief in the Left and in the Democratic Party as it is to shake an evangelical Christian’s belief in Christianity. The big difference, however, is that the Christian believer acknowledges his Christianity is a belief, whereas the believer in liberalism views his belief as entirely the product of rational inquiry.”
I'd just like to add: Rational Inquiry my foot. When I lived in Appalachia, I met snake handlers and people who spoke in tongues who were more rational than the average State-cultist.
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