Writes Giles Coren, in "The real Sacha Baron Cohen has always been on show/Rebel Wilson may be right about the Borat creator, but being an ‘asshole’ is part of what makes him a comedy great" (London Times).
I'm giving this my "Streisand effect" tag!
Coren has lots more to say, including the big statement, "All creative geniuses are assholes." And — after naming many names — "Cancel the rapists by all means. Cancel the sexists and the racists and the bullies and the kiddy-fiddlers. But the assholes? Cancel the assholes and you cancel all the world."
Coren has lots more to say, including the big statement, "All creative geniuses are assholes." And — after naming many names — "Cancel the rapists by all means. Cancel the sexists and the racists and the bullies and the kiddy-fiddlers. But the assholes? Cancel the assholes and you cancel all the world."
This is the third post of the day with the tag "assholes." Haven't been trying for a theme day. It just happened.
ADDED: A word about "bantz." Just 2 days ago, we were talking about the word "badinage," which is a fancy alternative to the word "banter." So it's funny to encounter "bantz," which, I just learned, is a casual variation of "banter." The OED says it's "colloquial (chiefly British)." The earliest sighting of the word in print came in 2008 (on Twitter!):
2008 Went to Aids' house and had yummy foods + bants! Loves it! [continues in new post] It was scary uni type bants though with people my age, hmm... still fun! @Cara62442 31 July in twitter.com (accessed 28 Oct. 2020)2013 [His] abrasive, unapologetically blokey shtick (heavy on ‘bantz’, low on wit) hasn't evolved since Loaded magazine was briefly considered a good thing. Guardian 12 April (G2 section) 28/3
2018 They drank, stole a taxi, did a runner, ate loads of last food, 'ad it large and then got relegated. Classic laddy behaviour. Top bants. Independent (Nexis) 14 May
Now, must I look into "doing a runner," "last food," "having it large," and "getting relegated"?! I can see that "doing a runner" is leaving a difficult situation. I'm not convinced "last food" is anything but a typo for "fast food." I think "having it large" is having a good time, and "getting relegated" might mean getting put in your place. Don't rely on me for any of that. It's obviously British.
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38 comments:
He is an asshole…
This reminds me of the whole Your So Vain kerfuffle. That guy is an asshole, too…
I just found out Denis Leary's bit I'm an Asshole was stolen from Louis CK.
I appreciate that some people (a lot of people) find Baron Cohen funny, but his type of humor (what I've seen of it) just gives me secondhand anxiety.
I wonder if that quote from the Independent was a metaphor about a Premier League soccer team who played (were managed perhaps?) in an irresponsible but entertaining way (like "lads" on a night out), and were then relegated, i.e. demoted to a lower division of the English soccer leagues (the EFL or "championship" league). Or, I suppose it could be the other way around, using soccer talk to describe actual young men on a spree.
It's funny that Sasha's character he used to attack Biden's enemy was a Kazakhstani kleptocrat who plied corrupt American pedophile *Republican* politicians with money and trafficked children, when the only actual Kazakhstani kleptocrat that we know of, has been photographed with Joe and Hunter Biden, and who has absconded with hundreds of millions from his home country, stolen while he was an official there. He laundered some of that hundreds of millions through bio-labs in Ukraine, BTW. Oh, and Hunter Biden appears on his laptop in sexual congress with a Chinese child, probably procured by the Chinese intelligence services in order to gather kompromat on the Biden family, evidence of pedophilia being a prized lever over people, look at the Mossad and Epstein, for example. Presumably the Chinese secret police killed the child after Hunter was through with her, out of human decency. This stuff was on the laptop, with other stuff so vile that it actually serves Hunter to preclude public discussion of it.
Every accusation is a confession with them. They do it because the truth often leaks out, and any odium must be redirected at their enemies should it happen. In the case of Cohen, he went after Giuliani because Giuliani had a lot of evidence that he gathered as Trump's impeachment lawyer, of Biden corruption, which could have been used to justify Trump's contacts with Ukraine on Biden corruption, and so Giuliani must be destroyed. This is also why he was raided by the FBI, even though he was Trump's lawyer, and all of his phones and laptops were searched, to determine what he actually had on Biden, and the people who had cooperated with him in Ukraine were then charged with treason, because, you know, revealing Joe Biden's corruption is treasonous if you are Ukrainian.
I used to have faith in our government, not that many years ago, really, but the stuff that they do is so transparent now that it is impossible to go along any longer and pretend that it isn't happening simply because I am told that if I don't, it brings my love of my country into question. If anything, my love of country is what makes me so disgusted with these people.
Some people are here to see you, m'lord: three reporters and a gentleman from The Times.
In ages past The Times wouldn't touch a story like this rubbish with a ten-foot Hindustani gun bearer, but now... O tempora, o mores.
Why Cohen would resist being classified as a massive asshole, especially by another massive asshole, is mysterious. Being a massive asshole is the source of his wealth and fame. It's certainly not his comedic talent because he has none. When the audience laughs at his antics it is because the sound mind often uses laughter to sublimate the impulse to kill the perpetrator of such outrage. We know the creep on the screen is out of reach and beyond the hand of righteous vengeance, so we laugh or we leave in disgust.
"All creative geniuses are assholes....Cancel the assholes and you cancel all the world." So, creative genius is something that requires insertion of a finger in the asshole to start it up? If only I'd known this in my 20s, I might have amounted to something!
Sometimes, I park in handicapped spaces
While handicapped people make handicapped faces
I'm an asshole
(He's an asshole, what an asshole)
I'm an asshole
(He's a real fucking asshole)
I believe "did a runner" in that sentence means that they left without paying for the taxi.
Streisand is an asshole…
Not only an asshole, but a massive asshole. In mining culture a crate of assholes is similar to chicken shit, a great number of small petty things that tax you on a regular basis. “I was buried by a crate of assholes the minute I stepped off the man cage today and they are still after me.” Then stomp your foot to crush the little asshole that is supposedly sneaking up on you.
I suspect that assholes are like diamonds, many small assholes are not as valuable as one massive asshole, because huge assholes are scarce.
Nothing more humorous than an American trying to do Bri'ish.
I think being an asshole is part of the SBC brand. What I question is the authenticity of all this. Maybe it's part of an elaborate scam to puff the book. A memoir by Rebel Wilson might sell a few more copies than the ruminations of a retired Supreme Court Justice but not by much. This might help to sell a few copies....Or maybe it's on the level. It seems extremely hypocritical for someone like SBC to take offense at being publicly maligned but what do you expect from an asshole. Maybe it will enhance the SBC brand to be perceived as a true and not just a pretend asshole. It would be like some action hero intervening to stop a mugging.
So when he was jackass with palin four yeads ago that was fine
The asshole is 'literally' the elephant in the room.
Or...
"This Never Happened To The Other Fella"
That Jonathan Haidt quote has stayed with me, by the way. It bears a resemblance to an AA quote about "the first drink being like dancing with a gorilla. The dance isn’t over till the gorilla says it's over"
These metaphors help us disassociate; the assholes are on the other side indeed.
Great posts Althouse... "when it's cooking, it's cooking... it's cooking"
When Coren says "Cancel the assholes and you cancel all the world", it looks like he's alluding to Shakespeare, specifically I Henry IV, II.4:
"No, my good lord; banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world."
Certainly being a massive one hasn't stopped certain long term career politicians from floating to the very top of the bowl in the swamp on the Potomac. Swamp critters like Adam Schiff and Joe Biden, I'm looking at you.
Things I know about Sacha Baron Cohen;
1 - Something something Borat.
2 - Strange outfit with his junk in some weird little bag.
3 - Huge asshole.
"I just found out Denis Leary's bit I'm an Asshole was stolen from Louis CK."
Everyone. Is someone's. Asshole.
Whose asshole are you?
Cohen’s schtick is to lie to people to manipulate them, to weaponize their decency against them, and subject them to ridicule for being decent. He’s a cancer.
But just as bad is the person, like Giles, who thinks that, because he admits he’s an asshole, it’s fine for him to be one. He uses confession as permission.
"Streisand is an asshole…"
Streisand is a calculated affront to the Universe. Why do you suppose there is only one person on Earth whose last name is "Streisand"?
And yet again...rich, liberal comedian/actor is a massive asshole.
News at 11.
All this 'assholier-than-thou.'
I love that one. I also thought the first Borat movie was funny.
AITA?
I had to look up the actress. No beauty, that one, and a bit of a fatty.
Still, she's using what she's got and playing the old gallants here like a didgeredoo.
A good few creative geniuses in the Althouse comment section. No end of them really.
"Cohen’s schtick is to lie to people to manipulate them, to weaponize their decency against them, and subject them to ridicule for being decent."
I suppose that's because ridiculing assholes would hit too close to home for him. Is there such a thing as "professional courtesy" among assholes?
"He’s a cancer."
That's the way it looks to me.
It depends on whether being the asshole is just part of the act, or whether being the asshole is the default all the time with everyone.
If the latter I don't have much use for that person no matter how hilarious.
You say you can't live with what you been through
Well, ladies you can be an asshole too
You might pretend you ain't got one on the bottom of you,
But don't fool yerself girl
It's lookin' at you
Don't fool yerself girl
It's winkin' at you
Don't fool yerself girl
It's blinkin' at you
How do we know Cohen wasn’t going for the Streisand effect?
I think Quaestor is too kind to the people who laugh at Borat and tim maguire hits closer to the mark. Borat came out as elite hysteria over supposed Islamophobia and xenophobia generated by the 9/11 attacks and the GWOT was becoming entrenched but it shows average Americans reacting to SBC's bizarre and offensive pseudo-Muslim character with decency as he insults their country, values, and religion. Without the anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic schtick to hang on SBC's "Ali G" character and Borat would have gone nowhere.
I think Quaestor is too kind to the people who laugh at Borat and tim maguire hits closer to the mark. Borat came out as elite hysteria over supposed Islamophobia and xenophobia generated by the 9/11 attacks and the GWOT was becoming entrenched but it shows average Americans reacting to SBC's bizarre and offensive pseudo-Muslim character with decency as he insults their country, values, and religion. Without the anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic schtick to hang on SBC's "Ali G" character and Borat would have gone nowhere.
Fuck Cohen up the arse with a petrified pine tree. He, as much as Larry David, was the Jew who mainstreamed Jew hate in pop culture. How dumb or clueless did he have to be to think “Throw the Jew down the well” would be received as enlightenment by anyone who wasn’t already in on the joke that wasn’t even funny to people who were in on it. Fucking grifter.
And then to compound it, he goes out and gives speeches about the need to censor antisemitic speech.
I would celebrate if he and David went over a cliff. “It’s a start.”
Fluff-story. Celebrity news used to distract us from the Real News, which American journalism now rarely covers, choosing instead to cover Beyonce, Kharadashians, Umansky and Richard and some lesbian country singer, Sasha Baron Cohen and Rebel something-or-other.
Who should care? Why do we read this stupid stuff?
Meanwhile, the bridge in Baltimore is destroyed, and Baltimore mayor only wants to discuss "white rage against DEI". We are a failing society.
My lovely wife recently had a similar discussion in the greenroom of a comedy club. She opined that all of us comics are, by necessity, assumes, to some degree or another. (On the stage, not necessarily off it.) We say the things that others can't/ won't. It's a large part of our purpose.She actually got pushback from one of the other comics!
No one here has referenced the TEAM AMERICA asshole speech yet?
Who ARE the posters here??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DHyhF8jLr8
"Assholes," not "assumes." Since when is auto-correct such a prude?
Giles Coren is the man who created the Prince William cheating rumor. He admitted later on Twitter it was not true. He is also friends with Megan Markle.
I've pondered this article for several days. I've concluded that Sacha Baron Cohen is just you garden variety prick. A vain insecure bully.
I'm an asshole and I ought to know.
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