Who Is Sacha Baron Cohen Satirizing?
There’s a reason why Sacha Baron Cohen left the “Kinderguardians” segment to the end of the first episode of Who Is America?, his new satirical Showtime series. The 10-minute sequence is Cohen at his best, playing a swollen, testosteronic Israeli pro-gun advocate called Colonel Erran Morad who’s able—by sheer force of character—to get politicians and lobbyists to argue that children as young as 3 should be armed. The more people Morad talks to, the more preposterous the sketch feels, until you’re cupping your jaw trying to fathom how actual lobbyists and politicians are saying these things.
“A 3-year-old cannot defend itself from an assault rifle by throwing a Hello Kitty pencil case at it,” says Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina. “Our Founding Fathers did not put an age limit on the Second Amendment.”
“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,” says the former congressman and talk-radio host Joe Walsh. (Yes, he said mortars.) “In less than a month, less than a month, a first grader can become a first grenader.”
“Toddlers are pure, uncorrupted by
