The Process Behind Sacha Baron Cohen's Cons Is So Thorough That One Can Sorta See Why (Some Of) These People Fall For It
By now, we’ve all seen Georgia state rep Jason Spencer’s disastrous appearance on Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who Is America?” Today, he announced his resignation, reminding us that defending yourself with your asshole and screaming the N-word can hurt your professional standing. It’s incredible to think that Cohen was able to make a politician look so bad on a comedy show that he had to resign, given how much shit politicians seem to be able to say these days. If “I grab women by the pussy” is under the bar, you’d almost think that anything goes. But obviously, thankfully, not.
One of the questions I ask myself while watching this brilliant show is how do these people not realize they’re being tricked? How does a career politician not suspect that something is off? Some do: Ted Koppel, Dick Cheney, and Bernie Sanders all made it through without blowing themselves up. Cheney signed a waterboarding kit, but that seems in line with what we know of Cheney. Dude loves waterboarding. That’d be like Bill Cosby signing a container of pudding. Bet you thought I was going somewhere else with that. But in just two episodes, we’ve already seen a handful of politicians who comply with the insane requests that Cohen hands them. We all think we wouldn’t get tricked if we were in that position, but how does he even get them there?
Last week, Politico published a fascinating article about how Cohen manages to set these people up. It reveals just how much work and depth goes into the long con.
Politico- Walsh was among four current and former Republican members of Congress who endorsed a phony program to provide firearms training to pre-schoolers in interviews with Cohen, who posed as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert named Col. Erran Morad for his new Showtime series, “Who Is America?”
Last October, a woman calling herself Ashley Winthrop emailed Walsh on behalf of the made-up production company First Liberty Pictures and invited him to be interviewed for a “docu-style series” about terrorism to be broadcast on Israeli television.
In February, Walsh received an inquiry from “Alexis Rothe” from the fictitious Yerushalayim Television. In an email, “Rothe” informed Walsh he had been named to Israel’s “70 at 70” list in honor of the 70th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
“The people of Israel understand that they owe their very existence to the unwavering support of powerful figures like Congressman Joe Walsh,” she wrote. “We have already sat with Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, Bono, and Steven Spielberg.”
Walsh’s wife checked out the website domain from which Alexis emailed him, yerushalayimtv.com, which is now defunct but at the time was live and appeared to list television content in Hebrew.
“Since we don’t read Hebrew, we could not verify ourselves,” she told POLITICO.
So Helene Walsh wrote to “Rothe” asking, “Could you please send me the website (in English) for Yerushaleyim TV? Would like to check out the station/company/content.”
Cohen’s team ignored the request, but Walsh went ahead and sat for an interview anyway. In a studio in Washington at the end of February, Cohen’s team presented the former one-term congressman with a real statuette for his fake award for “significant contributions to the state of Israel.” Walsh went on to deliver a heartfelt, on-camera endorsement of the plan to arm small children.
If you’re a staunch republican whose constituency favors gun rights, you might believe that appearing alongside an Israeli soldier to endorse the arming of children in schools is a good idea. Or at least that it would play well with your base. And this all comes after months of Cohen’s team buttering you up with awards, telling you that you’d be in the company of “Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, Bono, and Steven Spielberg.” The point is, by the time you get to the interview/segment, you no longer have your guard down. And that’s where he makes his move.
Clearly, Cohen has a budget set aside for lawsuits. He knows that a lot of people are going to sue his socks off. He’s been dealing with the settlements that arise from his duplicity since his Ali G days. There must be some limit to what people can sue him for, perhaps under parody law? Or maybe his movies/shows make so much money that they’re willing to forfeit a huge portion of it for legal purposes? If any lawyers want to drop an explanation in the comment section, uhm, thanks.
In some sense, it feels like entrapment. If a team of people had set up a fake website in a language I didn’t speak, presented me with an award, and courted me for months and months, I’d definitely show up to that interview. But I like to think that I’d stick to my principles and not make too much of a fool of myself. Who knows though.
If he does get you, you have to take it in stride like this Walsh guy:
On Twitter, Walsh has clarified that he does not actually support arming kindergartners and has taken the episode in stride. “It’s on me,” he tweeted. “Sacha fooled me good.”
Good response. Sarah Palin went another direction. We’ll see how it pans out for her.
H/t Mike