Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Who Is America?' visited Kingman, and it was ugly

Bill Goodykoontz | The Republic | azcentral.com

Show Caption Hide Caption Sarah Palin slams Sacha Baron Cohen for duping her in prank Sarah Palin slammed Sacha Baron Cohen and Showtime Tuesday on Facebook for their new prank series, claiming the comedian duped her and her daughter with a humiliating interview by posing as a disabled veteran.

Joe Arpaio still hasn’t shown up on Sacha Baron Cohen’s show “Who Is America?” after two episodes.

But Kingman did Sunday night. And it was not a good look.

Cohen, in his guise as ultra-liberal Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, conducted a town meeting in the small Arizona city in one segment of the show. He told the assembled crowd that an exciting economic opportunity was coming to the place he called, in the introduction, “home of civil-rights activist Timothy McVeigh.”

The crowd was excited — until he said the project was a $385 million mosque, the world’s largest outside the Middle East.

The buzz that ran through the crowd was immediate, electric and not exactly positive.

'We don’t want that (expletive) here'

“Just the word alone scares you,” one man yells at Cohen’s character. “When I hear the word ‘mosque,’ I think of terrorism.”

More responses:

“We don’t want that (expletive) here.”

“You bring in Muslims, we’ll probably have problems. We will have problems.”

Now, it’s true that Cohen is trolling for the worst possible response in this show, which airs on Showtime Sunday nights. He often gets it. But he’s not putting words into people’s mouths. He’s just giving them a microphone for their feelings, and it got really ugly in Sunday night’s episode.

To further incite reaction, “Cain-N’Degeocello” said the people of Kingman don’t have to worry about funding. Most of cost will be covered by the Saudi government and the Clinton Foundation. Talk about adding fuel to the fire.

“She’s a piece of work,” one woman said, presumably talking about Hillary Clinton.

Another person said, “That’s even worse than the mosque.”

An ugly image of Kingman

At one point Cohen’s character said he didn’t mean to imply anyone was racist.

“I am,” one man yelled. “I’m racist toward Muslims.” And, a minute later, looking at the rendering of the mosque, “That would look good in a fire.” (Cain-N’Degeocello said the building would be made of stone, so a fire wouldn’t be possible.)

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, one man yelled, “This town’s lucky to have black people in it.”

Cohen’s character said he agreed, that African-Americans bring a lot to the community.

No such luck.

“He’s saying there are black people in Kingman who aren’t welcome, either,” another man explained. “But we tolerate them.”

Not everyone in Kingman

Full disclosure: I lived in Kingman for a year, where I served as the Western bureau for The Arizona Republic. It’s been far too long for me to characterize the people who live there now. However, I can say that in my experience, the “Who Is America?” segment does not represent all of the people I knew in Kingman. But it definitely represents some of them.

Again, you can make the complaint that in this segment and in this series, Cohen is trapping people, tricking them into saying awful things. And again, I’d respond that he is, in fact, simply giving them the opportunity to do so. (Another elected official made an absolute fool of himself in this episode.) Whether it’s the rise of President Donald Trump or a wave of fear or anger or who knows what, more people clearly are feeling empowered to say the awful things they evidently have been feeling, but had the decency to keep quiet.

That’s changed, and Cohen is tapping into it. When he tapped into Kingman, it wasn’t pretty.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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