Author: Steven Zeitchik / Source: Washington Post
The fine-art expert Christy Cones was at work one day last year when a staffer from a British reality-TV company turned up at her gallery in Laguna Beach, Calif. Calling herself Alexis, the producer told her a hardened British ex-con had recently gotten out of prison and would like to talk about art.
Could he come in and have an on-camera conversation with Cones?The ex-con walked in the next day bearing face tattoos and a neck brace, Cones recalled in an interview. He then described to her his process of becoming an artist over 20 years in jail, mainly by using his own bodily fluids. The man spent much of the hour-and-a-half trying to get her to acknowledge the artistic value of his banal works – at one point, he successfully solicited praise on paintings he said he made with his own waste – all in an apparent bid to evoke the art world’s pretention and self-seriousness.
The man was actually the British-born, Los Angeles-based comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. “Borat,” on a new quest to engage, expose and at times embarrass subjects around the country for a series called “Who Is America.” When the first of seven episodes debut on Showtime Sunday, viewers will get to see a fresh round of cringeworthy conversations, often with top political, media and tastemaking figures (in addition to Cones it includes Bernie Sanders, Richard B. Cheney, Ted Koppel, Trent Lott and current Republican Congressmen Dana Rohrabacher and Joe Wilson). All have no idea they’re being duped by one of several characters that Cohen plays in heavy makeup.
“Oh my God, it was all an act? He faked his tears?” Cones said when told by a reporter what had happened. She recovered a second later. “I don’t care. Am I supposed to say I’m embarrassed? All conversations about art are important.”
“Who Is America” attempts to expose the foibles and even hypocrisies of leaders on a wide range of subjects, including American foreign policy and gun rights, and the xenophobia of some Americans. (Journalists were given a preview of the early part of the first season.)
For liberals, the show serves as a kind of horror-comedy comfort food to those by dismayed by current news. At the same time, it is likely to reinforce the perception of many conservatives who view Hollywood as a place of knee-jerk scorn that will stop at nothing to mock its audiences, particularly in middle America.
“I join a long list of American public personalities who have fallen victim to the evil, exploitive, sick ‘humor’ of the British ‘comedian’ Sacha Baron Cohen, enabled and sponsored by CBS/Showtime,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post this week, in which she said she flew across the country to be interviewed by someone claiming to be a disabled veteran. “I sat through a long ‘interview’ full of Hollywoodism’s disrespect and sarcasm,” she said, also noting the “sick nature that is media-slash-entertainment today.”
“Who Is America” was developed and shot in secrecy over at least the past 15 months. The first intimation of its existence came just two weeks ago when Showtime announced a mysterious series but wouldn’t say who its star…
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