Now if he'd made Borat from Uzbekistan, THAT would have been funny...

Check out this article on real-life furor from President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the antics of Borat, the fictional Kazakh TV reporter.

In Kazakhstan's defense, especially concerning Borat's phrase "Throw the Jew down the well," I saw alot more anti-Semitism in Moscow than I did anywhere in KZ. For any sociologists out there looking for PHD thesis themes, I think there is fodder here for the study of modern humor in this culture clash. It reminds me of the questions people used to ask me in Moscow when they started showing M*A*S*H reruns in Russian. It totally blew their minds because they'd never seen comedies about war before. If you've never seen a Soviet film about WW II, you can't imagine how dark and depressing movies can get--any other treatment of the subject came as a bit of shock to them.