But Is It Good for the Jews? ; Borat Taps Into a Familiar Strain of Prejudice

Summary

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When Sacha Baron Cohen, now famous everywhere as Borat, collected his Golden Globe last week as the best actor in a comedy, Jews everywhere asked each other a familiar question: "But is it good for the Jews?"

Jews who laugh with Borat, the wild and crazy journalist who satirized anti-Semitism in the movie "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," think he's the Jewish counterpart of Archie Bunker, the lovable bigot in a sitcom of yesteryear. But other Jews think Borat fans the fires under the stew of prejudice and fanaticism always ready to boil on a back burner. Columnist Charles Krauthammer, observing how easily Borat taught the lyrics of his "Throw the Jew Down the Well" to an astonished audience in an Arizona tavern, accuses him of looking for anti-Semitism in the wrong places: "Can a man that smart .. really believe that indifference to anti-Semitism and the road to the Holocaust are to be found in a country and western bar in Tucson?"

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But Is It Good for the Jews? ; Borat Taps Into a Familiar Strain of Prejudice

But that may not be the point. Borat shows how easy it is to tap into prejudice, to lure a man to express bias openly when he thinks he's in friendly territory. On the day Sacha C...

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