Queer Attack on Gentleman of the Old Republic

"This guy is a queer!" shouted the Good Doctor, who would have been within his rights should he have punched the guy in the face — Ron Paul's insane cameo in Sacha Baron Cohen's upcoming Bruno movie. Click on the link if you really want to know the details of how Dr. Ron Paul fell victim to a movie "targeting celebrities and conservatives of various stripes;" I won't print them here. Here's what our man's people had to say:

A spokeswoman for Paul confirmed that the episode took place but declined to provide details. "We don't want it to distract from his message," said press secretary Rachel Mills. "Now is the time when people need to be listening to him on economic issues."

Mills, who was present at the taping, did elaborate on the "queer" line. "I heard him say 'weird,' " she wrote in an e-mail. "In any case, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Queer as Folk … it's not exactly a shocking term if that's what he did say."

Mills also noted that Cohen's people were "very deceptive in their tactics." At the time, she thought they were "legitimate," but now confesses to some concern. "I'm familiar with his work, so you can imagine how I feel about it," she said.

The rest of the movie is a mix of interviews and stunts targeting celebrities and conservatives of various stripes. At one point, Bruno enrolls in a homosexual reprogramming course with evangelical Christians and spends the whole time hitting on the trainers. He sits down with a leader of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, who tells Bruno to leave after Bruno tells him "your King Osama" looks like a "dirty wizard." During an interview with Paula Abdul, Bruno makes immigrant day laborers get down on their hands and knees and serve as furniture. And in the movie's much-hyped set piece, he stages a cage fight in Arkansas where, to the audience's surprise, he proceeds to make out passionately with another man.

Jesse Benton, senior vice president of Campaign for Liberty and former campaign spokesman for Paul, said Paul was not familiar with Cohen's HBO program, Da Ali G Show. "If it's not on hard-core financial news, he doesn't follow it," Benton said. But, he added, "It sounds like it's going to be pretty funny."

No. It won't be funny. This idiot's humor, from what I understand of it, involves luring unsuspecting people under false pretenses into compromising and embarrassing situations. I suspect people who find him funny also found it funny when bullies picked on other kids in high school. Perhaps his fans, being in on the joke, feel superior to his clueless victims. How pathetic! Even more pathetic is that this half the country will reject as a buffoon and the other half will reject as a "homophobe" the man who's leading what may be the most important fight we face — Abolish the Fed. It's cold comfort that I have seceded from popular culture.

(Sacha Baron Cohen, by the way, "is the youngest of three sons in an Orthodox Jewish family," "first acted in theatrical productions featuring the Socialist-Zionist youth movement Habonim Dror," "spent a year in Israel at Kibbutz Rosh HaNikra and Kibbutz Beit HaEmek as part of the Shnat Habonim Dror," and "keeps kosher and generally observes the Jewish Shabbat, refusing to answer the phone on Shabbat.")

[link via Western Standard's Terrence Watson — Poor Ron Paul]