The video du Samedi: Borat, comedy, and anti-semitism

Is Borat funny? I think he is. Is the fact that his humor exposes things that we would rather not see or that we would like to deny exist make it inappropriate? I don't think that it does. Charles Krauthammer's arguments against Borat can be summed in one sentence: you pick the wrong country to mock, fool, Europe is a lot more anti-Semitic than America. I think that Krauthammer misses the point. He refuses to see something that is true about America, which is that it is, in spite of its support for Israel, a place where anti-Semitism exists, is on the rise, and too often is condoned or ignored (it took Mel Gibson’s rant to prove the obvious and even then some blame his rant on alcohol) . It is possible to support Israel and to be anti-Semitic. There is no doubt that America is one of the most tolerant countries in the world, but there is also no doubt that increasingly, anti-Semitic feelings are increasing because people like conspiracy theories and because as always it is easy to scapegoat the Jews for all the ills of the world.