Ali G goes to the rodeo

[Phil_Meloy]

Rodeo in Salem gets unexpected song rendition: A man purportedly from Kazakhstan launched into a diatribe instead of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

By Laurence Hammack. The Roanoke Times


No one knows for sure who he was, that Middle Eastern man in an American flag shirt and a cowboy hat who was supposed to sing the national anthem at a rodeo Friday night in the Salem Civic Center.

But he sure shook up this town before leaving in a hurry.

Introduced as Boraq Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan, he was said to be an immigrant touring America. A film crew was with him, doing some sort of documentary. And he wanted to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" to show his appreciation, the announcer told the crowd.

Speaking in broken English, the mysterious man first told the decidedly pro-American crowd - it was a rodeo, of all things, in Salem, of all places - that he supported the war on terrorism.

"I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards," he said, according to Brett Sharp of Star Country WSLC, who was also on stage that night as a media sponsor of the rodeo.

An uneasy murmur ran through the crowd.

"And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq," he continued, according to Robynn Jaymes, who co-hosts a morning radio show with Sharp and was also among the stunned observers.

The crowd's reaction was loud enough for John Saunders, the civic center's assistant director, to hear from the front office. "It was a restless kind of booing," Saunders said.

Then the man took off his hat and sang what he said was his native national anthem. He then told the crowd to be seated, put his hat back on, and launched into a butchered version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" that ended with the words "your home in the grave," Sharp said.

By then, a restless crowd had turned downright nasty.

"If he had been out there a minute longer, I think somebody would have shot him," Jaymes said. "People were booing him, flipping him off."

Rodeo producer Bobby Rowe, who by then had figured out that he was the victim of some kind of hoax, had the man escorted out of the civic center. Rowe told him that he and his film friends had best leave right then.

"Had we not gotten them out of there, there would have been a riot," said Rowe, who has been bringing his Imperial Rodeo Productions to Salem for years.

As his wife, Lenore, put it: "It's a wonder one of these cowboys didn't go out there and rope him up."

Saunders agreed. "I was concerned for his personal safety," he said.

Once the film crew members and their star realized the severity of the situation, Bobby Rowe said, "they loaded up the van and they screeched out of there."

After apologizing to the crowd for being duped, Rowe was left to wonder who pulled such a hoax, and why. Months ago, he was approached by someone from One America, a California-based film company that was reportedly doing a documentary on a Russian immigrant, Rowe said.

The outfit asked if Sagdiyev could sing the national anthem at the rodeo in Salem. After listening to a tape, Rowe said sure.

By Saturday afternoon, Jaymes had observed that Sagdiyev looked a lot like the title character of "Da Ali G Show," a Home Box Office production that often catches its guests and audiences unaware and then records their reaction to "shock value" material such as Friday night's performance.

The show has a character named Borat from Kazakhstan, according to the HBO Web site.

Jaymes said she recalls that one of the five cameras was turned on her and others on stage, as if to catch their reactions.

"I looked at Brett and said, 'Why do I feel like I'm in the middle of a bad "Saturday Night Live" episode?'" Jaymes said.

As Rowe prepared Saturday for a second night of the rodeo, he was playing it safe on who would sing the national anthem.

"It'll be a tape," he said.

[Brian Olewnick]

Excellent.

[Gary Sisco]

Now that's performance art. And fucking funny as hell.

God bless this great country. I'm tellin' ya. Where else could you read a local feature like that, huh? Anywhere? Huh? I'm askin, over here.

[Gary Sisco]

I'm serious. That't my first real, losing-it, belly laugh of 2005. Fuckin' genius.

[Jazzzoline]

Reality TV, where will it lead us...

I long to download it from the Internet.

[Gary Sisco]

No one could make this shit up.

[Gary Sisco]

I'd decided previous to reading this that the only American artist who had anything relevant to say about American life in 2005 is Scott Adams. Now at least he has some company, in this guy. Someone give him an Oscar. Hell, give him two.

[Dr Dave]

Boyakaa! Respect! We got to have Education if we want to get to the Space Station!

[Rob C]

U.S. and A.! U.S. and A.!

[Chris D]

Much respek.

[hearsay]

Gary you should see the show, it's great.

These jingoistic fucks always give me the creeps.

[Rob C]

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/conten...ta_talk_radosh

DEPT. OF FOREIGN RELATIONS
THE BORAT DOCTRINE
by Daniel Radosh
Issue of 2004-09-20
Posted 2004-09-13
Roman Vassilenko, the press secretary for the Embassy of Kazakhstan, wants to clear up a few misconceptions about his country. Women are not kept in cages. The national sport is not shooting a dog and then having a party. You cannot earn a living being a Gypsy catcher. Wine is not made from fermented horse urine. It is not customary for a man to grab another man’s khrum. “Khrum” is not the word for testicles.

These falsehoods, and many others, have been spread by Borat, a character on “Da Ali G Show,” which recently finished its second season on HBO. Like Ali G, Borat is played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comedian who specializes in prank interviews. As Borat, Cohen has told a dating service that he is looking for a girl with “plow experience,” persuaded a meeting of Oklahoma City officials to observe a ten-minute silence in memory of the (fictitious) Tishnik Massacre, and, most notably, led a country-and-Western bar in a sing-along of “In My Country There Is Problem,” whose chorus goes: “Throw the Jew down the well / So my country can be free / You must grab him by his horns / Then we have a big party.”

It was partly Borat’s casual but relentless anti-Semitism that led Vassilenko to object publicly, in a letter to The Hill, a Washington weekly. (In real life, Cohen is an observant Jew, but the Anti-Defamation League also condemned him, arguing that “the irony may have been lost on some of the audience.”) “He says things that make people think that Kazakhstan really is a backward country,” Vassilenko said last week from his office in Washington. In Borat’s Kazakhstan, Jews attack people with their claws, and “Dirty Jew” is a popular film. But the real Kazakhstan has long embraced its thriving Jewish community, according to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, and earlier this month the country dedicated the largest synagogue in Central Asia. “The President of the country came down, as well as the chief rabbi of Israel,” Vassilenko said. “There were all kinds of rabbis from around the world, and a New Yorker. He was not a rabbi, but you might be interested to know the name. The name is Ronald Lauder.”

Vassilenko is also chagrined at Borat’s portrayal of women in Kazakh society, epitomized by his claim that “in Kazakhstan we say, ‘God, man, horse, dog, then woman, then rat.’” Vassilenko said, “I don’t think our women like that, not to mention the men. We have women ministers, women judges, businesspeople.” Nor should Borat have been appalled, as he was in one episode, to learn that American women can vote. American and Kazakh women both got the vote, Vassilenko pointed out, on August 26, 1920.

It turns out that almost nothing about Borat’s Kazakhstan withstands scrutiny. Borat doesn’t look like an ethnic Kazakh. His Kazakh words “resemble some gibberish Polish,” Vassilenko said. And, while Borat has claimed that “in Kazakhstan the favorite hobbies are disco dancing, archery, rape, and table tennis,” Vassilenko concedes only the first and the last. Archery is “not prominent,” he said, and statistics show that the Kazakh sexual-assault rate is far lower than the United States’. (That may be because the crime is more likely to go unreported.)

So what is the national sport of Kazakhstan? “The most known ones are wrestling and all kinds of sports that try people in how they master horses,” Vassilenko said. “Kazakhs were traditional nomads, so there are various sports like horse races. Another horseback sport is called something like Catch a—what is name?—Catch a Bride. And that is that a group of young guys race to get a bride, and she races away from them and they have to catch her while she fends them off with a whip.” This sport does not result in actual matrimony—just a kiss.

According to Borat, a Kazakh man gets a wife by buying a woman from her father for fifteen gallons of insecticide. Vassilenko disputes this, too: “The men propose marriage with engagement rings.” There is an old tradition—“maybe a hundred years ago,” Vassilenko said—of men kidnapping their brides, but he claims that the practice is virtually obsolete. Also, he said, “If you want to do it for fun, you can do that,” but the woman has to be in on it.

Travel guides mention a Kazakh sport called kokpar, a precursor of polo. When Vassilenko was asked about it, he hesitated, then explained, “That’s the one where a goat, a dead goat”—a headless dead goat—“is, um, being held as a sort of a prize. And then one rider has it, and he has to run away with it from others who seek to catch it and snatch it from him.” And then they have a party.

[Brian Olewnick]

LOL! That "defense" is almost as funny as a Borat clip!

[mke]

I am appalled by SB Cohen's incorrect and misleading portrayal of Kazakhstan.

[graypencil]

My favorite guilty pleasure!!

Respeck ..keep it real ...

[chuckyd4]

I like how he concedes that "disco dancing and table tennis" are among the most popular hobbies in Kazakhstan.

Unfortunately he remains silent on the question of whether or not Kazakh women really fear man with chocolate face, or which woman is indeed best at sex in mouth.

[Brian Olewnick]

Not to mention those broken ahnuses.

[Monte Smith]

This is funny, but come on. They didn't need to yank him out of the ring and whisk him away so soon. Tape of Ali G. being torn to shreds by rodeo fans would also have been funny.

[bluenoter]

So was it really "Ali G" at the rodeo, or don't we know?

I've never seen his show. I don't normally watch TV and I don't have cable, which I assume it's on.

[RBS]

Originally Posted by bluenoter

So was it really "Ali G" at the rodeo, or don't we know?

I've never seen his show. I don't normally watch TV and I don't have cable, which I assume it's on.

It sounds 100% like it was. You can rent his DVD from your local video store.

RESPECK!

I just watched the DVD. Ali G. had a roundtable called "Relijan." He had a rabbi, a priest and an athiest on. He asked the priest why "Jesus had all dose reindeer." The priest said, "I think you're confusing him with Santa Claus." To which Ali G. replied, "You means it wasn't your father dressin' up?"

[jesus marion joseph]

Don't watch TV? No cable??

ARE YOU INSANE, WOMAN??!!

[Monte Smith]

"Respeck!"

God, I would have respecked it. If Ali G. got his balls torn off on the discrete horns of two separate bulls. Har har har!

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

Don't watch TV? No cable??

ARE YOU INSANE, WOMAN??!!

Apparently so!

Originally Posted by RBS

You can rent his DVD from your local video store.

Thanks, but I don't have a DVD player either (or a VCR).

[Jazzooo]

You can also do a web search and find Ali G's website and watch a clip, Rita--we know you have a computer!

As a few will remember, Ali G was the topic of one of my early theads here at JC. What a unique talent. No doubt.

[Gary Sisco]

I don't watch tv but imagining the scene alone had me bent double laughing. Bronwyn thought I was going to have heart attack.

I wish someone would release a field recording of the stuff the audience mikes picked up.

Genius.