The first full-length clip of Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Who is America?' takes aim at gun advocates and it is absolutely staggering
This could be the 'Brass Eye' of the 2010s
Last week, we wrote: “Oh boy oh boy. We knew the new series from Sacha Baron Cohen was going to be good, but we didn’t think it’d be quite this good,” which was based on former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin unleashing a furious blast of criticism at the former Ali G, Borat and Bruno star for ‘duping’ her.
But, really, that was absolutely nothing compared to the level of gloriousness/terrifyingness that is on display in this ten minute long clip from Baron Cohen’s new series Who Is America?
Having spent a year undercover, this is the first true glimpse of what he’s been up to, and the results are utterly staggering.
This segment shows Baron Cohen, in heavy prosthetics (looking strangely like Freddie Mercury, which is quite ironic), but with that unmistakeable voice and interview style, managing to convince a series of gun advocates, including Republican senators, to endorse the arming of children as young as three years old - with one commenting that this would be good, because they have yet to develop a conscience, which would make them ‘very effective child soldiers’.
Related: ’Brass Eye’ two decades on: the unstoppable genius of Chris Morris
But that’s not all, he manages to get Larry Pratt, the Executive Director Emeritus of Gun Owners of America to jokingly agree with him that ‘it’s not rape if it’s your wife’.
Meanwhile the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League Philip van Cleave is - somehow - convinced by Baron Cohen to film a kindergarten gun promotion campaign video, featuring guns mocked up as toy animals including ‘Puppy Pistol’, ‘Dino-gun’ and ‘Gunny Rabbit’.
The piece de resistance, however, comes from Pratt gleefully following an autocue - in pure Brass Eye style - repeating ludicrous claims such as “a child aged four processes images 80% faster than an adult”, before saying that “children under five also have elevated levels of a pheromone Blink-182 produced by the part of the liver known as the Rita Ora. This allows nerve reflexes to travel along the Cardi B neural pathway to the Wiz Khalifa 40% faster”.
Just watch this and try to cushion your jaw when it hits the floor.
Related: This is what gun-mad America would look like if they’d never changed their Amendments
What on earth else has he got in store for us? We can’t wait to find out.
Who Is America? premieres on Showtime in the US tonight (Sunday), and will air in the UK on Channel 4 on Monday 16 July at 10pm
(Image: Showtime)
