Kazakhstan threatens "Da Ali G Show" over satire

Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry threatened "legal action" against the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who wins laughs by portraying the Central Asian state as a country populated by drunks who enjoy cow-punching as a sport. Mr. Baron Cohen, who portrays a fictitious Kazakh television host, Borat, in his "Da Ali G Show," has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan. Mr. Baron Cohen appears to have drawn official Kazakh ire after he served as host of the annual MTV Europe Music Awards show in Lisbon earlier this month, when Borat arrived aboard an "Air Kazakh" propeller plane controlled by a one-eyed pilot clutching a vodka bottle.
"We do not rule out that Mr. Cohen is serving someone's political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way," the Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yerzhan Ashykbayev, said. "We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind." He declined to elaborate.