I have "Saturday Night Live" sketch idea but it can't be used...

... because regular TV-watching type people don't care enough about David Brooks. But the idea is to combine 2 things:

1. David Brooks's story about how one time he sat through some dinner and all the while endured the hand of a Republican Senator on his inner thigh.

2. Bruno, the Sacha Baron Cohen character, who is always crossing lines to see what kind of a reaction he can get out of various uptight/homophobic/politically correct Americans.

Bruno escalates the outrage until the prank target finally rejects him, and what's so funny — when it's funny — is how long it takes for some people make him stop, making Brooks an ideal target.

***

Ah! Suddenly, I get it. I see what Brooks was doing. The theory that Brooks doesn't know how to disengage from a grope or that he's too polite is absurd. But this needs a second post, with its own headline. Hang on a sec.

"Bruno" disappointed me.

I'm a big fan of "Da Ali G Show," where Sacha Baron Cohen plays 3 characters in short scenes that wrap up in half an hour. But, having seen "Borat" and now "Bruno," I have to admit I don't want to watch one of the characters for 90 minutes, especially "Bruno." I'm not a fan of story arcs. I love disjointed little bits. I like Bruno as the Austrian fashion reporter with the microphone in his hand. People who want to get on TV and to appear trendy will tumble into agreement with praise for Hitler or take direction that makes them look gay. (Here's an example I find especially funny.) But in the movie "Bruno," Bruno is fired from that job and comes to America to try to get famous again. That's not much of a story. It's just a narrative thread to connect different scenes — possibly generated after many of the scenes were filmed.

But why am I complaining? Didn't I just say I liked disjointed little bits? Well, but now Bruno is kind of down and out, and much of it is Sacha Baron Cohen trying to show us what Americans are really like. Fortunately or unfortunately, Americans failed to give him the homophobia footage he seems to have hoped for. I'm sure a ton of unfunny footage was thrown out, and that what went into the film was the closest he could get to hilarious, but most of these Americans simply remained stone-faced and tried to preserve their professionalism and dignity in the face of a very clownish man. Cohen did what he could — for example, wielding multiple big dildoes at a martial arts instructor — to goad people into flipping out about the gay guy, but — other than getting Ron Paul to blurt out "queer" twice — it just wasn't happening.

And the struggling Bruno can't be so outrageously bitchy. He wants people to help him. He's needy. He's more like Borat. But he's not lovable. I don't want him lovable. The Bruno I like needs to believe he's wielding power so he is able to trick people into showing their desire to leverage their fame through him. We see that in the movie in the one scene where some parents are trying to get their little kids hired as models. They think Bruno has some showbiz power, and they grovel before it. One woman is ready to make her 30 pound daughter lose 10 pounds in one week and to submit to liposuction if she can't get all that weight off. Now, that was something! It would be daring as hell to have 90-minutes on that level of pain. But that wouldn't be too funny, and it wouldn't be a blockbuster.

"What is this year's 'in' religion?"

Just one of the questions the Digg community came up with for Bruno.

"I think it’s a joke. I’ve tried to schedule furlough time and was denied because we’re short-staffed."

Working through the "furlough," which, it turns out, is another name for pay cut. Does the euphemism soften the blow? I don't think so:

Robert Bruno, a professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois, Chicago, said the furlough experience could be traumatic.

“A furlough is a dangerous and risky bet because it severs the relationship between an employee and their compensation,” Dr. Bruno said. “A worker’s emotional reaction to a furlough takes control of rational thought.”

The movie "Bruno" should play with a big disclaimer: "This is intended to expose homophobia."

The folks at the Human Rights Campaign "strongly feel that Sacha Baron Cohen and UNIVERSAL PICTURES have a responsibility to remind the viewing public right there in the theater that this is intended to expose homophobia."

Really, why are people even allowed to see movies? God knows how they might interpret them. I knew this one guy one time who saw a movie and concluded that it could be understood on multiple levels. Moviemakers have the obligation to nip that sort of mind-wandering in the bud. Channel us, please!

"Eminem, it's nice to meet you."

Bruno's alternative to the handshake:

MTV Shows

Ryan Seacrest tweets that Eminem was not in on the joke.

At least not the full joke.

"Get me out of here. This is crazy. This is not funny, this is discrimination. This is abusive stuff going on here."

Paula Abdul stands up to Bruno.

MeinSpace.

Bruno.

ALSO: The poster.

"We played it straight and square. Nay, we simply are straight and square."

"We smiled at the idiotic questions and answered them patiently. We remonstrated that this was no way to help the youth of the world understand the depth and tragedy of our conflict."

How serious, intelligent people get taken in by Sacha Baron Cohen. I don't know what's funnier, the dialogue he — as Bruno — extracted from two experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...

“Vait, vait. Vat’s zee connection between a political movement and food. Vy hummus?”

We exchanged astonished glances. “Hamas,” we explained, “is a Palestinian Islamist political movement. Hummus is a food.”

“Ya, but vy hummus? Yesterday I had to throw away my pita bread because it vas dripping hummus. Unt it’s too high in carbohydrates.”...

“Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse.”

... or the fact that they were taken in because the producer who scheduled the interview "had a British accent and seemed serious and professional" and the crew arrived "with its three cameras and large coterie of assistants" and was "serious and very professional."

So the key to pulling a prank is not cracking up. And having a British accent. Cohen's comedy is based on his accents — Bruno has a ridiculous Austrian accent — and it works not just because his accents are funny, but because accomplices maintain that accent that people take so seriously – the old British accent.