Bruno the film is coming…

Think back to Borat and that scene in which Borat introduces the black American politician – Alan Keyes - as a “genuine chocolate face”.

And then try to imagine the scene again, but this time with a working class comedian like Bernard Manning trying to pull the same stunt. What would happen? Well, they’d be mayhem that’s what. The guy would be crucified on a lefty cross of self-righteousness before he knew what had hit him.

So how does Sacha Baron Cohen get away with it (at least in the eyes of the media)?

Well, because he’s middle class.

Unlike for example, Bernard Manning, a famous working class comedian from the UK. And what’s worse, Bernard was also fat. And he told “racist” jokes. So the lefties in England, when he passed away a couple of years ago, rejoiced in his death as if he were a Nazi war criminal. A fat northern bastard that should have been strung up long before he died.

Now I certainly don’t agree with racist jokes that are motivated by hatred – but is there really anything that wrong about lighthearted humor with the Scots taking the piss out of the English or straight dudes taking the mick out of gays? Or the Indians taking the piss out of the Pakistanis? Or Arabs making jokes about the Jews?

Bloody hell: even white middle class Guardian readers still make jokes – although they are now pretty much confined to either fat people or people with ginger hair given the prevailing laws of political correctness that hold sway in the UK.

And while Bernard Manning was certainly a bigot, he never killed anyone. And as far as I know he never crippled anyone either. But I’m not so sure whether Sacha Baron Cohen and his friends can say the same thing….

A California woman has sued British actor Sacha Baron Cohen accusing him of assault in an encounter she said occurred during filming for the upcoming movie Bruno that left her in a wheelchair.

In her lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on May 22 and first reported by celebrity website TMZ.com on Wednesday, Richelle Olson said that in 2007 Cohen appeared at her charity bingo game in his guise as Bruno, a flamboyantly gay Austrian.

Olson's lawsuit said that at the bingo game Cohen pushed her and she fell, and then she was surrounded by his cameramen, who attacked and filmed her.

She later escaped to a side room, where she fainted, hit her head and suffered bleeding in her brain, the lawsuit said. She now uses a wheelchair.

In her lawsuit, Olson also named as a defendant NBC Universal, the studio behind Bruno, which opens on July 10. It was unclear whether the incident would appear in the film.

Source: the Age