Ross Clark Ross Clark

Isn’t it time Sacha Baron Cohen got cancelled?

Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

How helpful of the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen to reveal that there are two or three people in America who are happy to join in a sing-along containing the line ‘Liberals, what we gonna do? Inject them with the Wuhan flu.’

Trouble is, it really only was two or three people. If Baron Cohen really was trying to expose the American right as a violent mob, his infiltration of a rally by the Washington Three Percenters, described as a Trump-supporting, pro-gun group, was a miserable failure. Baron Cohen’s wheeze was to pose as a bluegrass singer and to take to the stage and try to whip up the crowd by duping them into singing songs with lyrics that would identify them as hate-filled right-wing lunatics.

Perhaps for good reason, the footage of the event – which was filmed for Baron Cohen’s forthcoming TV series – barely shows the ‘crowd’. That’s because there wasn’t one – or not one that was worthy of the name. By straining my ears I could make out the voices of three people. At one point a fourth person walks in front of the stage, showing no reaction to the song at all. Soon afterwards, it appears the organisers had had enough of Baron Cohen and tried to remove him from the stage, but were prevented from doing so because the comedian himself had hired a team of heavies.

Sacha Baron Cohen can be funny, but his moment has passed. His fake persona is not nearly as amusing as Donald Trump’s real one. If Baron Cohen is to be judged as someone who exposes public prejudices – which is how, increasingly, he seems to want us to judge him – he falls a long way short.

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