“When it comes to the safety of our children, the way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good child with a gun. Happy shooting, kids.”
That may sound like a Sacha Baron Cohen spoof, but you’d only be half right. That tagline came at the end of a sneak peek of Cohen’s new political mockumentary, Who Is America?
In the clip released on 15 July, Cohen poses as an Israeli anti-terror expert and talks to Republican Congressmen and former senators and attempts to sell them on an Israeli campaign to arm children between the ages of four to 12. Most of the Republicans shown seem happy to get on board.
The 10-minute clip dives straight into providing “solutions” for the various school shootings in America by running a fake show, “Kinderguardians” which gives advice to children on how to turn from being a “first-grader to a first grenader”.
The outlandish notions about arming children aren’t the worst of what was caught on camera. Larry Pratt in particular, the Director of Gun Owners of America, a gun rights organisation, revealed some virulently sexist and Islamophobic views, all at the instigation of Cohen, of course.
If they [toddlers] hear something shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’, they are likely to instinctively go for that gun.Larry Pratt, Director, Gun Owners of America
Cohen responded, “We actually had a problem with this, a man was praying and said ‘Allahu Akbar’ and he was shot.” To which Pratt responded with raucous laughter, adding, “Pray in secret!”
In another instance, Cohen says:
Women need the gun, my wife shot me, what can I do, I get horny in the middle of the night. But it’s not rape if it’s your wife!
To which Pratt and Cohen laugh uproariously, and even share a handshake, before Pratt shrewdly says, “That probably won’t be on the video we send to The Hill (a US publication).” Good call, good call.
Buzz about the show has spread like wildfire – much to Republicans’ chagrin, now that they know they’ve been had.
Right Wing in a Sweat
The Republicans interviewed have backtracked and have claimed that they were “duped” by Cohen, saying they did not know what they were getting into when they shot for the video.
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, in an interview with CNN, said Cohen lured him to the shoot by telling him that he was “getting an award from some Israeli TV station because I'm a great supporter of Israel”.
Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher also launched a defence of his part in the clip, in which he says:
A 3-year-old cannot defend itself from an assault rifle by throwing a Hello Kitty pencil case at it. The founding fathers didn’t put an age limit on the Second Amendment.
Despite clearly mentioning a 3-year-old in the clip, Rohrabacher’s defence goes like this: “Cohen’s people apparently used footage from an interview I submitted to earlier this year for a bogus Israeli television company supposedly celebrating the country’s 70th anniversary. In that interview, which was not with Cohen, I spoke broadly of training young people at a responsible age in self-defence. At no time did I endorse training toddlers in handling guns. Nor was the idea even presented to me directly. If it had been, I would have rejected it. In school shootings, the standard response is “Run, hide, fight,” in that order. My response was perfectly consistent with that. I love good satire, but good satire must reveal some basis in truth. This was fraud, a sick fraud at that, and its intention was to deceive the American people for political purposes”.
Right-wing leader Sarah Palin, who reportedly also appears in the show, lashed out at Cohen for “pranking” her.
Sarah Palin wrote about flying across the country with her daughter to meet a war veteran and was instead greeted by a heavily disguised Cohen. “I join a long list of American public personalities who have fallen victim to the evil, exploitative, sick "humour" of the British "comedian" Sacha Baron Cohen, enabled and sponsored by CBS/Showtime,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
Kudos from Democrats
Unsurprisingly, many on the left side of the political spectrum are hailing the show as a much-needed look into how facile and corrupt gun rights advocacy has become today.
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