Sacha Baron Cohen, the actor best known for his role as “Borat,” has pulled another fast one on unsuspecting Americans — this time talking his way into joining a training exercise at an Alabama National Guard facility.
Posing as a journalist for a German TV documentary, Cohen arrived at the Alabama Military Academy on Feb. 13 with a film crew, supposedly to film footage for an upcoming program. In truth, Cohen has been working on a new film based around a character named Bruno, a gay fashion writer from Austria.
“It’s an embarrassment to the Alabama National Guard,” Staff Sgt. Katrina Timmons said Monday, according to the AP. “Since then we have put in protocols to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Cohen was able to enter the facility, put on a military uniform and briefly begin training, before a young cadet recognized the actor and notified senior officers. In the style of Borat, Cohen's ruse with the National Guard unit involved him exposing his thong underwear while dressing.
“They called and said they were a German affiliate of a TV station doing a documentary on what it was like to be in officer candidate school,” said Timmons. “They wanted to know if they could come here and embed one person for a few hours up to a day.”
The send-up took place at Fort McClellan, about 65 miles east of Birmingham, which was the site of a dinner party gag in the hit 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
“He was treated like a member of the media and escorted around. He was put in a uniform like he requested to allow him to get a taste of what it was like to be an officer candidate,” she said, reported the AP.
The Smoking Gun recently detailed how Cohen, through an elaborate series of front companies and fake websites, has been able to pull off his popular shtick.
It's refreshing to know that Americans are still friendly and unsuspecting enough to welcome a quirky foreign journalist into their workplaces and homes. Frankly, the fact that Cohen got away with his shenanigans on the Guard base is a helluva better of a story than if he had been found out on the way in. Even at the cost of looking naïve to the world.
So a big booyah to Borat/Bruno — we look forward to the movie.
Making protection of US of A
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