All the posts still exist and are simply unapproved until the matter can be discussed further.
I just rewrote it, so please don't delete it again... I don't want to discuss it with admin or anything... I don't care... But if there's something wrong with this post just let me know what it is via PM and I'll fix it for you to save you the hassle if you don't have the time to snip stuff... I'd like to discuss the show, without discussing tangential politics. That's what you said, right? I've made a big effort to not mention anything political, whatsoever that doesn't need to be said in the context of a statement about the show.
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It's not difficult at all to find easy targets when you're attempting to humiliate people, especially if you're doing it in poor uneducated communities. The sections that bothered me the most from this series were the ones that involved real people, not celebrities or politicians. Like the guy he got to dress up as a woman. That's trashy manipulative television. It's worse ethically than most reality TV. A brilliant rich guy (Cohen) gets an uneducated poor guy from a poor community and humiliates him for money. It's exploitative and manipulative... and it doesn't mean anything.
Sacha Baron Cohen is a master manipulator. That's an understatement, actually. He's basically a mentalist. He can get people to do anything. Either that or he's lying through selective editing or he's paying them to read from a script... If you watch it again, pretty much everything that everybody says is fed to them. (I think it's a combination of all three methods.)
There are an enormous amount of humiliating videos online of people of all political associations.
Somebody said (this comment was also deleted) that he targets people on both sides. But, this isn't really true. He throws a couple of left wing "targets" in there... like Bernie Sanders... But, he doesn't go to great lengths humiliate any of them. There is a left wing character he plays on the show that is very self deprecating, and hilarious, but the show is clearly aimed in one direction. The left-wing character and the harmless Bernie Sanders appearance is intentional fodder for people - like spacejunk and Cream Gravy - to use to justify the show not being politically biased... Everybody who is humiliated in the show is conservative.
It is the equivalent of any number of Youtube series consisting of conservatives humiliating ignorant liberals... the only difference is it's created by super talented people like Nathan Fielder and Sacha Baron Cohen.
Da Ali G Show wasn't trashy manipulative television. It had boundaries. It was relatively respectful. They didn't try to utterly humiliate people and destroy their reputations. Bruno and Borat started verging into another territory. Borat was racist, but it was hilarious... and it was racist against Kazhakstan which - like rednecks and conservatives - is a socially acceptable target... But, still, they didn't break through all of their boundaires of journalistic decency.
Who is America has stepped over that line. It is not a show that tries to catch people off guard and expose them for who they are. It is a show that manipulates people into presenting an often pre-written version of themselves that is as bad as humanly possible. They put words in their mouth. They edit selectively. They coerce people into doing things that they otherwise wouldn't do... When journalists do the same thing, we call it unethical. But, when a comedian does it, it's satire.
Someone as wealthy as Cohen, inviting a bunch of people in a small town in the middle of Arizona facing economic turmoil and massive unemployment rates under the guise of boosting their economy... many of whom were elderly and probably had to travel a relatively long distance... and then intentionally trigger them with strategic pre-planned strategies to provoke a reaction... and then edit that reaction to make the whole town seem racist... This is - in reality - pretty horrible.
It was better when he had less of an cut-throat political agenda. This show promotes political division. It promotes hatred.