BORAT
Written by Steve Sloane to
the New Yorker • Fall 2006

To the Editor:
Recent editorials and letters to the editor and even proposed litigation regarding Borat, the hilarious comedy have given me reason to pause. The Romanian villagers were fooled into playing themselves, as ignorant, isolated, unsophisticated, Jew-hating Kazakstanis. Are Eastern Europeans really like that? They were only kidding. Right? My own grandparents were lucky enough to escape from Pogroms and the vicious prejudice of Eastern Europe, unlike those from our family that stayed behind to be tortured and annihilated during the first half of the 20th Century. No hard feelings here, really. Thank you Grampa. Thank you Gramma. Thank you for leaving Russia and Poland and Germany behind so that I could grow up in Great Neck. I am proud to be an American and I don't care what Borat's detractors say.

Recently, after beating my Polish friend at tennis one suspiciously warm November morning in Brookville I commented that the lovely day was a blessing and his remark, “But not for me,” was no doubt just lamenting his loss of the two hour match. Still, it reminded me of the scene in Borat during driver's education wherein Borat responds to his teacher's information that in this country women can choose with whom they have sex and that it is a good thing. Borat’s response “Not for me” sounded just the same as my friend’s. I asked my friend about Borat and his exasperated response was, “Why do they have to speak Polish in that movie. It is not Poland!” He had not seen the movie, but had heard about it and was not happy about the association. I assured him that I believed that the Polish were the brightest people in the world. We did mention Chopin and Copernicus, but not Schmolnicki and Roman Polanski.

My Russian assistant also heard that Borat was awful. She pointed out that Kazakstan was one of the more progressive former Soviet Republics and that the movie’s characterization was incorrect. Her country, just next to Kazakhstan which is mostly Muslim and which I will not name to protect the guilty, is much more backward. Similar to Pamela Anderson who was bagged in the movie by Borat, my assistant's own gorgeous mother, before she got married, had been bagged six or seven times, and it was not fun for her.

Borat is critically compared to Andy Kaufman’s foreign man. Growing up with Andy I can testify that we strongly influenced by Lenny Bruce and one of our favorite teenage pranks was to pretend to be foreigners and try to convince “squares” (remember them) that we were for real. We called it “goofing.” We used to get into the prejudices that people might expect from foreigners and pull their legs as much as they would allow. We particularly enjoyed posing as Swedish tourists and trying to proliferate the open sexual style of Sweden on sexy young American women, in the early blossoming American “free love” movement. Andy told me that he went to a massage parlor in Times Square goofing as “foreign man.” He had seen a picture of Marilyn Monroe with the offer of “Dating” advertised outside, went inside and insisted on a date with “The Marilyn Monroe” until a bouncer threw him down the stairs. Just “goofing.” Who is the victim?

By exposing the prejudices and ridiculing the fools who maintain them, Borat has opened up the entire subject of prejudice and bigotry, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism. Finding harbor in Romania and America with unsuspecting hosts from many walks of life only proves the point that we are a sick society and suffer awfully from our prejudices. Do we have to be heroes to stand up against such pervasive ignorance and harm? Hopefully, exposing these sensitive issues with humor will open them to more serious and therapeutic discussion and treatment for us as individuals and our society in general.

—Steve Sloane
—Glen Cove, NY

iPod FETISH by Juan Martinez
(continued from the Home page)

• Apple Computers provides a comprehensive warranty for the iPod.
• Any problems one has with the iPod can likely be fixed, for free, within moments.
• If the problem seems difficult to fix Apple just gives out new iPods.
• The iPod may inspire people to run faster
• There is a new version of the iPod available for sale.

There was, in my opinion, a legitimate, interesting, newsworthy focus of this article (the value that Apple has found in providing accessible tech-support to its customers). There was also a lot of unreasonable swooning over the virtues of a small electronic device that, as far as I can tell, an estimated of 290 million Americans do not own.

This flagrant, persistent, disturbing trend must be fully evaluated. Thankfully, since I just got access to the Lexis Nexis databases, I am able to do just that. You should know, Mr. Okrent, that there are over 498 articles which contain an instance of the word “iPod” in the paper. (Actually, there are 501 such occurrences, but 3 of those refer to the international phase of oil drilling or some such thing).

206 of these articles mention the iPod twice. I’m going to use that “at least 2” function as a proxy for depth of coverage.

Of all the articles written since that first iPod article (Oct 24 2001)...

There have been 209 articles, three more than the iPod, which mention the word “malaria” twice, which, unlike the iPod, kills approximately 2 million every year. (According to Nicholas Kristof's column from January 5, 2005).

There have been 120 articles that mention the word “stent,” twice.

Stents are well-designed technological innovations that have savedtens of thousands of lives. The iPod has yet to save anyone's life, asfar as we know.

There have been 98 articles which mention the word “spaghetti” twice. Spaghetti, and other pastas, are eaten by tens of millions of Americans a day. It is eaten by my roommate every day. You’ll be reassured to note, however, that noodles receive better coverage in your paper: 251 instances.

Colin Powell, our former Secretary of State, a man held in incomparable regard around the world, our nation’s chief diplomat during a succession of global crises, has had his name crop up multiple times in 284 articles—which is a mere 76 more times than the iPod during that period.

Only one article features Powell’s name and the iPod twice. (3/21/04 Week in Review “First, Your Water Was Filtered. Now It’s Your Life”).

My point isn’t that the paper should lament all the ink it's devoted to the iPod and to instead write only about serious, sober topics of international import. The paper is best when it mixes the heavy with the light, the solemn with the fluff. The iPod is a fad, and fads are newsworthy, and that’s great. Nor am I upset about all of the incessant gushing about the iPod—I understand that it’s a well-designed gadget (frankly, though, the gushing is a little embarrassing).

I’m upset, sir, because I don’t have an iPod, and it seems like everyone else does. It also seems that Apple owes you guys a favor, so, I’m wondering if you could call them for me, explain all the free press you’ve given them, and get them to mail me a new unit.

—Thanks,
—Juan Martinez