Defending Borat

British comic Cohen defends his alter ego Borat

Sacha Baron Cohen has stepped out of Borat's unwashed, gray suit and dropped the misogyny to defend his controversial movie about an anti-Semitic, fictional TV journalist from Kazakhstan.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine released on Wednesday, Baron Cohen, 35, said he was surprised the film had caused such offense in Kazakhstan or that its humor had been so misinterpreted.

"The joke is not on Kazakhstan," he said. "I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist -- who believe that there's a country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and they drink fermented horse urine."

He said he always had faith in the audience to realize this was a fictitious country and the mere purpose of it was to allow people to bring out their own prejudices.

"I think part of the movie shows the absurdity of holding any form of racial prejudice, whether it's hatred of African-Americans or of Jews," said Baron Cohen, a devout Jew who keeps kosher and the Sabbath when he can.

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