Rabbi Yonah

Kazakhstan, bastion of no sense of humor, is mad at Sacha Cohen, creator of Borat. Borat is one of Rabbi Yonah’s favorite characters, absolutely brilliantly funny, taking the piss out of everything and revealing so much about our own prejudices.

Kazakhstan got all upset last year at Borat’s claim that women are kept in cages, the the Kazakh national sport is shooting a dog and then having a party, that Kazkh wine is made from fermented horse urine and that it is customary for a man to grab another man’s khrum. According to Reuters and CNN’s Offbeat News, Kazakhstan may sue him.

“We do not rule out that Mr. Cohen is serving someone’s political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way,” Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev told a news briefing.

“We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind.” He declined to elaborate.

Of course, Kazakhstan has done some nice things for Jews. They recently made a really nice shul! Then again so did many dictatorships to show how

nice they were. (Because they think that Jews really run the world ?!?) But Kazkhs do have some strange practices, like kokpar “That’s the one where a goat, a dead goatâ€?—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.â€? Then they have a party.

See The Foward too on Agent Sacha Baron Cohen.