New victims for TV trickster
Former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh joined Sarah Palin and Roy Moore in decrying Sacha Baron Cohen’s new satire series
during an interview Saturday on CNN.
Cohen is ‘‘a funny guy because he gets people to say stupid things,’’ Walsh told the network. ‘‘He gets people to say stupid things because he lies to them.’’
Walsh was one of the many politicians and pundits who Cohen fooled in the Showtime comedy’s premiere. The conservative talk-show host appeared in the show’s final segment called ‘‘KILL OR BE KILLED’’ in which Cohen – as fake Israeli ‘‘anti-terror expert’’ Colonel Erran Morad – offers a ‘‘solution’’ to America’s epidemic of school shootings.
‘‘The NRA wants to arm the teachers. This is crazy. They should be arming the children,’’ Cohen as Morad says, before introducing his (fake) new programme called ‘‘Kinderguardians.’’ The program would arm children as young as 3 and train them to use the weapons against ‘‘naughty men.’’ He makes it clear that 3 is the age limit, however, because ‘‘they don’t call them the terrible twos for nothing.’’
During the segment, Cohen-asMorad teams with staunch gun rights activist and president of the Virginia Citizens Defence League, Philip Van Cleave, to create a partially animated children’s video, replete with gunimals (guns that look like stuffed animals) and even a nursery rhyme about the best part of the body to strike (‘‘Aim at the head, shoulders, not the toes, not the toes,’’ Van Cleave sings, punctuated by Cohen-as-Morad rhythmically yelling ‘‘fire!’’).
Cohen-as-Morad then heads to Washington, DC, to find political support for his programme.
Several prominent members of the right give just that, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., along with former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott.
It’s here that he encounters Walsh, who enthusiastically backs the program.
‘‘The intensive three-week Kinderguardian course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semiautomatics and a rudimentary knowledge of mortars,’’ Walsh says directly into the camera. ‘‘In less than a month – less than a month – a first-grader can become a first grenade-er.’’
‘‘Happy shooting, kids,’’ he adds.
As Walsh explained on CNN, Cohen duped him by telling him that he was ‘‘getting an award from some Israeli TV station because I’m a great supporter of Israel.’’