Just when you think you’ve seen it all, American politicians go and one up themselves.
Last week the first episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America aired, and we were treated to elected officials talking about arming pre-schoolers with weapons to fight back against school shooters.
Yeah, that’s definitely the way to tackle that problem.
Well, good people, that is absolute child’s play compared to episode two, and in particular former Georgia state representative Jason Spencer.
The man is an elected government official, and also a complete and utter moron without an iota of a moral compass.
Vulture to set the scene:
While taking what he believes to be a self-defense training course with Baron Cohen’s Israeli character Erran Morad, the Georgia politician pretends to be a Chinese tourist (which he does by yelling gibberish); screams the N-word; rams his bare butt into Moran in an attempt to thwart a kidnapping (because he thinks it will threaten to make his kidnapper gay); warns people about “sand N-words”; and cuts off the prop penis of a terrorist mannequin and bites into it.
You’ll note that Spencer is a former state representative, and that’s because he lost his seat in May, long after the show had been filmed.
That being said, he is still currently serving out the rest of his fourth term.
Buckle up for a bumpy ride:
What the actual, right?
Not included in that video above is the clip of him cutting off a terrorist’s penis and eating it. Apologies for the language below, which is not bleeped out:
This is Georgia state rep Jason Sencer warning about “sand niggers” and eating a prop penis on Sacha Baron Cohen’s #WhoIsAmerica pic.twitter.com/pNIFbZZqAQ
— Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) July 23, 2018
I think we should also take a closer look at his Chinese impression to upskirt somebody to see if they’re a terrorist:
Earlier in the show, Spencer “pretended to be Chinese” so he could take an upskirt photo of a Muslim woman to see if it was actually a male terrorist. pic.twitter.com/ie3LAILb58
— Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) July 23, 2018
Where the fuck does one even begin to unpack how truly awful everything about this man is? A man that Georgia’s 180th district elected for four terms, by the way, before that recent May election.
Spencer isn’t the only person who comes out of this episode with their reputation in tatters.
A summary of some other people with egg on face:
Corinne Olympios:
This is not a great outing for former Bachelor contestant Corinne Olympios. Believing she’s filming promotional materials for a charity run by Baron Cohen’s Italian character Gio Monaldo, Olympios reads aloud from a script asking people to adopt a child soldier. (Support for a child soldier, she explains, involves buying them more weapons.)
She puts on a hazmat suit to film fake footage of herself in dangerous locations, and then, at Monaldo’s prompting, she also lies about her experiences traveling in Africa, going so far as to make up a story about an African warlord who recognized her from television. “I saved six thousand people,” she says, adding that her presence “really helped with the whole massacre situation.”
Dick Cheney:
The first Who Is America? footage that Showtime revealed came in the form of a 20-second promo released earlier this month, in which former Vice President Dick Cheney is asked by an unseen Baron Cohen character to “sign my waterboard kit.”
Unsurprisingly, Cheney’s segment turned out to be even worse than that quick clip suggested. “You started so many wars — Afghanistan, Iraq 1, Iraq 2 — which was your favorite war and why?” Baron Cohen, disguised as his Israeli terrorism expert Erran Morad, asks Cheney. “Oh, I think it was what we did in Desert Storm, I really do. I never thought of it as having a favorite war,” Cheney replies. “Of course,” Morad interrupts, “but you’ve got to enjoy it too!”
It gets even worse from there. “I have killed some terrorists. How does it feel being the king of terrorist killers? I mean, you killed 100,000 actual terrorists and about 700,000 potential terrorists,” Morad says. After a casual laugh, Cheney says, “Well, it was never personal. I wasn’t in the same position you are where it was kill or be killed.” Cheney is infamous for his pro-torture (or as he likes to call it, pro-“enhanced interrogation”) stance, so making him look even more evil is a tall order. But now we know he’ll chat about which of his wars is his “favorite” as if they’re ice cream flavors.
And finally, the Arizona mosque focus group:
Disguised as Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, Baron Cohen heads to Kingman, Arizona to present a focus group with a $385-million dollar proposal: The Saudi government and the Clinton Foundation want to replace the local shopping center with the biggest mosque outside of the Middle East, which would become “a hub for tourism for Muslims from around the world.” This does not go over well with the focus group, to say the least, and the bigoted responses from several attendees are incredibly painful to watch: “We don’t want that shit here … As soon as you said ‘mosque,’ you ruined it!” a bearded man in the second row says at one point.
When Cain-N’Degeocello says, “I didn’t imply anyone here is racist, of course not,” another man responds with. “I am! I’m racist toward Muslims!” Later, a third man interjects, “This town’s lucky to have black people in it!” to which Cain-N’Degeocello replies, “Yeah, of course you’re lucky to have black people. They add a lot to society!” That’s when the bearded man chimes in again: “He’s saying there are black people in Kingman that aren’t welcome there either, but we tolerate them.”
Nothing like rampant casual racism to remind everyone why Trump got elected.
Who is America? It’s a question many Americans won’t like the answer to.
[source:vulture]
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