Hacker Cinema
Who Is America?
2018 · TV series · 1 season
Created by Sacha Baron Cohen
A satirical half-hour series from comedian Sacha Baron Cohen exploring the diverse individuals, from the infamous to the unknown across the political and cultural spectrum, who populate our unique nation.
2 positive1 neutralfrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
> To make this point crystal clear, “correcting” someone with “ackshually the US isn’t a democracy” is ...
it's not a democracy, when a large part of the population is barred from voting, and / or if your idea of a vote is giving power to legal persons more than to natural persons during the voting process.
but fine, let me rephrase, the US is not more a democracy than China, North Korea, Russia, or any other clown state that says "wE aRe dEmoCraCy". Having large swathes of your mostly illiterate and poverty-stricken population so badly brainwashed that they fly their flag in their personal LinkedIn Profile, or pride themselves as "patriots" with a red cap, does not make the country "democratic".
To put it even more bluntly: the way the US sees its population in Appalachia is how the rest of the world views the US.
On the upside it all makes great entertainment (see Sacha Baron Cohen's "Who is America" which first and foremost is a documentary and only secondly is Satire).
As you can see, he doesn’t take himself seriously—most of the time.
What’s more puzzling really is his appearance on Who is America?[0]
Everyone of course delighted in portraying Mahbod as a douchebag tech bro who was easily fooled, proceeding vilify him further. At the time that was filmed, he was likely already experiencing his second brain tumor that would require surgical removal just weeks after the air date of the episode.
I’ve always been a fan of Sacha, but you’d think they would’ve dug into the dude’s past a bit more before deciding to crucify him.
[0] https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a22709637/sacha-baron-cohen-genius-founder-mahbod-moghadam/
The main issue with Borat wasn't the negative stereotypes of Kazakhstanians, it was the treatment of the villagers of God, how they were paid and lied to about how they'd be depicted in the movie that I at least personally didn't appreciate. It's a great film and Sascha Baron Cohen is a brilliant actor making actually meaningful content like Who Is America.