The Press Box - Is Sacha Baron Cohen the Greatest Troll of Our Time? | Damage Control (Ep. 501)

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

This week on 'Damage Control,' The Ringer’s Justin Charity and Kate Knibbs discuss how Amazon Prime Day turned into an ethical mess (1:29) and how to handle Sacha Baron Cohen's political satire in the age of President Donald Trump and fake news (17:53). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibbs. Welcome to Damage Control in the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpack what upsets, excites, and divides us in popular culture. Who is America? I'm not asking you an existential question. We're going to talk about Sasha Barron Cohen's new Showtime show.

The comedian behind Borat and Allie G is back. He has tricked a lot of politicians into saying stuff they really shouldn't say. And we're going to discuss what works in the show, what doesn't work, and whether Sasha Barron Cohen's brand of comedy even makes sense in 2018. But first, we're going to talk about Amazon Prime Day, of all things. Amazon Prime Day having changed from a weird online sales gimmick into a full-blown consumer holiday and a point of labor organizing and ethical concern. We're going to talk about it all here on this week's damage control.

Okay, so this Tuesday was Amazon Prime Day. Technically, it was longer than Tuesday. They extended it for a half a day. They extended it. They sort of... That was bullshit. Like, if you're going to have a day, say it needs to be 24 hours. They should have called it like prime two day.

Well, now you're being a prime prescriptivist. But let's set that aside for now. So Amazon Prime Day is a made-up holiday. It's made up by Amazon to give people to shop on Amazon.com even more than a lot of people already do. Amazon Prime Day is a three-year-old sales event. I was going to say tradition, but it's weird that I even would think of Amazon Prime Day

as a tradition as opposed to a sale that a company does. I thought it was longer than that it had been around for a long. than three years. Yeah, people talk about it like it's a weird colonial tradition. Actually, John Adams. In the first Amazon, Prime Day. So it's a three-year-old tradition or three-year-old sale. Prime Day has morphed into a summer retail bonanza as other online shops have come out with competing sales. Okay, so you basically have, and keep in mind, it's July. So we have a Black Friday sale but in the summer. And this year, the quote-unquote holiday coincided with worker strikes in Europe, which added

this extra layer of, I'd say, like, political consternation and scrutiny to Amazon Prime Day, you know, since it basically forces you to consider shopping with Amazon as a form of crossing the picket line. So, hey, let's talk about this. I feel like a year ago even, Amazon Prime Day was this pretty frivolous, but, you know,

a pretty frivolous but uncontroversial day where a lot of people, including a lot of people in media, would be like, this is going to be the time when I buy my instant buy. Didn't you buy an instant pot? I bought an instant buy, okay?

Last year I bought an instant buy. This year I bought nothing. Same. What changed? Well, I don't, I think that in the past year, attitudes towards tech companies in general have really swung negative, and Amazon hasn't been excluded from that sort of shift in public sentiment. And then the fact that there were worker strikes going on that timed up with this

just made it harder to ignore the problems with it. Amazon and click deal. Also, like, the deals weren't that good. Yeah, yeah, that is a weird thing that I noticed. Yeah. Also, I mean, Amazon Prime Day has been super successful. I was just reading an article about how Target ended up having one of its biggest sales days of the year on Prime Day because it introduced, like, a competing sale.

Like, Amazon has basically created a retail bonanza, like, a, like, a, across the industry. Now there's sales in basically like, you know, I think Walmart was having a big sale too. So anyways, that means that people don't have to even go to Amazon on Amazon Prime Day for deals.

They could go to Target and not have to feel guilty about crossing a picket line and get the same shit. So I think there's like a few different factors going on. Right. But it's odd because, again, especially once Amazon Prime Day isn't even about Amazon. It's just like a run-of-the-mill summer clearance sale. Yeah. So then this begs the question to me.

Why is Amazon Prime Day as much as it's a commercial phenomenon, also a weird media phenomenon, right? Like from the New York Times through lots of sites that basically, that very aggressively cover like specific deals on Amazon Prime Day, specific retailer deals. it feels like this is Amazon Prime Day is a rebranded it's like it's somehow a middle brow clearance sale that web like magazines cover in a sort of strange seriousness like they take it seriously in a way that if

Best Buy I sent you a mail or tomorrow and said we have a sale on electronics like that wouldn't be a thing that anyone cared about online no I well I think it's like evidence of how important Amazon, how powerful and important Amazon is, like, in the retail industry,

in the media industry. And it's also, I don't know, like, on the one hand, I love getting retail recommendations. Like, I read the New York magazine to the strategist all the time. Like, I find them genuinely helpful,

but then there's something a little weird about like the New York Times. and like every single major newspaper coming out with what is essentially an advertisement for Amazon. It just sort of makes it really apparent how important like e-commerce is to the media ecosystem and like how much traffic posts like that can do. I don't know. It's sort of depressing. But at the same time, if I'm like trying to buy an instant pot, I'm definitely going to hit up

some sort of media newsletter telling me which one day. get right i mean i do feel like it was less like to use that word depressing but i really just didn't think of it that hard last year last year i really was just like amazon you know yeah if you think too hard about it it's like every other company in that if you think too hard about it you'll probably find a lot of things not to like about amazon that said i want an instant pot and i'm finally going to buy an instant pot this year you know to your point about the general reputation technology companies in the past year or so. I think Amazon in particular has,

its reputational fall has kind of tracked with Elon Musk's in a way, right? It seems like the very same sort of previously, you know, an entity that was previously uncontroversial in a broad sense, but that had a sort of cadre of critics, it's suddenly like the dynamic is just totally blown open and now Amazon really is just so that we all can not we all I don't want to be too universal but a lot of people now just sort of agree that Amazon is not just the bad guy but that Amazon is this sort of world ending dystopian corporate monopoly and that's like such a precipitous fault in the course of the year especially if you compare Amazon to other tech companies. companies that had actual, like, that had scandals at the level of congressional hearings, you know, like Facebook. Like, Amazon didn't even have to go through, I don't know, helping ruin a U.S. presidential election. It's interesting, talk, like, hearing your perspective on this, because since I come from a tech media background, I think I've been more, like, tuned into critics of Amazon for longer.

like I remember like I've been aware of the workers' rights violations and stuff like that for a long time and also what it did to the publishing industry like I used to cover that a lot at Gizmodo so the fall hasn't seemed quite as precipitous

from like where I'm standing I should also disclose that my brother works for Amazon sorry Dan I'm gonna talk some shit about your company yeah so it hasn't been as precipitous, but it is interesting that, as you said, there hasn't been a huge scandal this year to sort of cause public opinion to shift.

I think the fact that we watched all of these different cities around America, like grovel at Jeff Bezos's weirdly muscular trying to get HQ2. Like I think... Explain HQ2.

Okay, so Amazon is opening a second headquarters, which they're calling HQ2. And they haven't announced where it's going to be yet. I think they're going to later this month. But basically, they encouraged cities around America to sort of pitch themselves to make arguments for why they should house this giant corporate headquarters. And so it was a story that a lot of tech and business journalists, tracked closely, just like sort of watching how desperate cities were to get this infusion

of corporate cash. I think that that story might have, you know, negatively influenced people's perceptions of the company, just because so many of the things that those cities did were, like, pretty embarrassing. Yeah, it seems like the Amazon HQ2 tour is so. is like when cities compete for the Olympics, but times 10, right? But instead of having at least entertaining sports event, you're just inviting a monopoly into your next.

Right. And saying, yeah, and like, you know, isn't it a lot of like, we'll allow you to avoid a lot of taxes and stuff like that. That's just not good for the infrastructure of the places that, or of the place of that, you know, wherever Amazon ends up. Let's talk about the picket line, as it were. Like, it's weird because I will say, you and I were both talking earlier about potentially buying

or not buying things on Amazon this year. I'll concede I didn't buy anything on Prime Day, but I didn't buy anything on Prime Day mostly because I was just too busy to think of something to buy. I was just too busy to browse. And so I can't really. in my case even chalk it up to, I did it out of an ethical sort of declaration. I was just too absent-minded to buy anything.

But I don't know, what your perspective on this year? I wasn't really planning on buying anything. And when I saw some articles saying, you know, don't buy something because you're going to be hurting this workers protest, I was like, okay, I won't buy anything. But it wasn't exactly a sacrifice for me. And also like full disclosure, I'm in. extremely active Amazon Prime user.

I had like three books delivered to me earlier this week. So it's not like, I'm not boycotting Amazon Prime in general. I don't know. It's tough. I probably should. But it's also so convenient to get toilet paper magically appearing at your doorstep

instead of having to carry it around. It really is the toilet paper. The toilet paper is really the thing with Amazon Prime. I don't know, but let's talk about the ethics of that, because even outside of Amazon Prime Day, it is, like, again, Amazon is this behemoth company. I feel like consumers could be more thoughtful about the scale of Amazon, what it means for its workers and what it means for, you know,

like I said, the cities where Amazon operates. But it's one of those things, it's one of those classic, situations where it's like on the other hand, I don't know, I just like using the service and I'm too lazy and ideologically unmoored to be a, like a truly, ideally responsible consumer. And I don't know what to do with that. I don't know. I mean, I guess both of us not participating in Amazon Prime Day was a step closer towards living our ideals, but I'm still going to buy toilet paper from Amazon.

Sure. I guess what I mean, though, is just that I think it's interesting how many debates in American culture about companies reduced to, it's sort of, it can seem that the best idea anyone has is you don't like company X. And so the best thing you can do is don't buy things from that company. And that seems to be a lot of times where American political imagination ends. Because there isn't, I don't, I feel like there is a lot of talk on Prime Day among people about not buying from Amazon. But there wasn't a lot of talk about political action in any, like, actually formalized sense that sort of like, in any sort of like legislative and focused sense.

I think in, I think in Seattle there is. Yes, and everyone should read Victor Lukerson's excellent piece on the politics surrounding Amazon and Seattle that just came out this week. It's on the ringer.com. Go check it out. Yes. So in Seattle there is. But just online, it's weird how it can seem impossible to get people to cross that barrier from thinking, as a consumer, I'm going to do X with regard to buying things in this company to, as a voter or as a political agitator, I'm going to do. I'm going to call my congressman too. Or I'm going to organize or I'm going to have like coherent thoughts about like I'm going to translate my consumer action into formalized political action. Because I think in a way that's more valuable. I think it's more valuable to pressure, you know, your city council if you live in whichever, you know, of these cities were.

HQ to I be based. Like I think those conversations and that sort of action is more valuable is objectively more valuable than just being like, well, I'm not going to order something on Prime for this one day, but then two days later I'm going to order toilet paper. Oh, definitely.

I don't think just not ordering something from Amazon for one day is really doing anything at all. I agree with everything you're saying, but I don't think I should be able to use it as an excuse tell myself that it's totally fine that I regularly shop on Amazon Prime without as long as I like go to a protest.

Like I think that a good first step is to stop ordering all of my ordering everything from this company that I think is like hurting America. That's probably like a good first step. But yes, you're right. We should also agitate. for legislation that breaks up monopolistic corporations as well.

Although I feel like that would be harder if Amazon ends up based in one of the cities where it is most frequently reported to have its HQ2 base, which is Washington, D.C. I feel like if that happens, remember when everyone was like, Mark Zuckerberg's going to run for president, we're going to have like Bezos 2020 signs to contend with. Silicon Valley East. Looking forward to it.

Okay, so last Sunday, Showtime released the first episode of Sasha Baron Cohen's new show, Who is America? In the show, Sasha Baron Cohen disguises himself and interviews people and politicians. The last segment where he pretended to be an Israeli anti-terrorism fanatic who wants to arm kindergartners in America was, in my mind, some of the most arresting and worthwhile television in 2018. He convinced a large number of U.S. politicians not only to agree with him on camera, but also to help him create this horrifying infomercial for arming three-year-olds.

The rest of the show I wasn't so crazy about. And so I wanted to have a conversation with you about whether you think Who Is America works as a comedy, whether it works as a satire, and what even makes successful satire in 2018. What should comedy do in the age of Trump? Well, it's, I mean, okay, funny. Funny is a tricky word. I feel, I, did you laugh? I, I, I, I definitely have laughed more at the, I laughed my ass off at Borat. Yeah, that yeah, poor at it. Boren, sorry. Boreh, it's pretty funny. Funny is tricky because I don't know that that's necessarily what, I don't think that's Sasha Baron Cohen's telos in a way.

I don't think being funny is the point. Like I think obviously there are a lot of different kinds of satire. I think that I just think of all the different Sasha Barron Cohen projects where the things that are most, the moments that are most effective is when you feel kind of stressed out. Yeah. And I think the stress is what makes something like. this effective where you're just like, oh man, he's eliciting these weird reactions from people and he's letting people sort of show their worst selves and show their worst selves in this

sort of unabashed, uncomplicated way. You know, tricking people, tricking quote unquote people into saying controversial or bad things. It's not like he's. holding people at gunpoint. That's the thing. It's like he kind of, I don't know, his whole thing is that he, all he does is put on a pretty loose schick. And that's really all he needs to get his subjects to like veer into the grotesque as far as ideas and language goes.

And I think that's effective in a way. I don't think it's funny all the time. I thought I hated the show for like the first 20 minutes. So the Bernie Sanders thing was, I just didn't see the point of it. And then he he sort of embodied this caricature of an extreme MPR liberal and told these like these Trump supporters that his wife was cuckolding him with a dolphin and they were trying to be polite. And I just didn't think it was funny And I also didn't understand What he was trying to elicit from them

Same with the Laguna There was another segment where he pretended to be A An ex-con who was using like his poo And bodily fluids and stuff As his medium for art And this Laguna Beach Gallery owner was very polite

I just didn't I thought that his choice of targets until the last segment was poor and didn't, it didn't work for me. I didn't understand what he was satirizing other than people's willingness to humor idiots. Yeah, I mean, but Sasha, Sasha Martin Cohen is, I just associate him with taking the piss, right? Like, that's his whole thing. I mean, you know, I think, I think who is America's complicated because the earliest promo for the show? is the footage is like footage of Dick Cheney, like sitting for an interview that you very quickly realize that Dick Cheney should not have sat for.

And it's like after that immediate, those immediate promos for the show came out a couple weeks ago, you start seeing these statements from politicians that are trying to preempt the series premiere but being like, hey, by the way, like I got tricked into participating in this show. there's footage of me saying X, Y, or Z. And I was tricked into saying that. And I just think that the liberal media is out to get me. And it kind of framed the show in this way that it was very easy to go into it with the

simplistic outlook of like, oh, okay, what Sasha Baron Cohen is doing is he's joining the resistance. And this show is just about taking down right wing figures. But I think that Sasha Baron Cohen's comedy. stick has always been a bit broader than that. Yeah. And it's always been more comprehensive than that. Because I think people were surprised by Sanders being, you know what I mean?

Like, I don't think people really saw that coming because they had told themselves that who is America was going to be about like owning the alt-right. Yeah. Not even the alt-right, but like owning the right wing. They didn't really own Bernie Sanders. Right. It was just sort of, that segment didn't work for me. I mean, I agree that his comedy project is like taking the piss.

It's just, I saw, there was a vice article that referred to him as like the greatest troll of our time or something. Do you think that that is an accurate assessment? Who's a better troll than Satcher Byron Cohen? I mean, other than me. Other than me, who is? And then other than you. I'm not a troll. Okay.

I just. No, but what do you dispute about that characterization? Because I get where that, I get where that kind of hyperbole would come from. And it's hard for me to think of, I mean, well, Trump is maybe the greatest troll over time. But apart from either Trump or Sasha Berg-Going, it's hard for me to think of somebody else who, if you said that, you're like, oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah, that person's the... I don't think I disagree with the assessment that he is a troll. I think I'm just

I'm not sure that trolling is what we need right now I love pranking like my greatest joy when I was younger was just fucking with people online offline loved it but I think when

We were five seconds ago when I called up to you a troll and you said I'm not a troll and now you're talking about you're totally a troll I was I was such an online troll I like catfish people I know but I'm not a troll anymore. And I just feel like there's something about using deception and doing this sort of like faux journalistic comedy right now that makes me uneasy.

Right. I don't know what it accomplishes. It doesn't make me laugh. It does like the kindergarten segment where he convinced all of those politicians. to espouse such a crazy-ass idea. I think, I mean, I definitely exposed them as fanatics and completely unfit for their roles. But right now, I'm just, he hits, like, the right target, like, 20% of the time. And I don't know if that's good enough to justify the project right now.

Interesting, interesting. I do, it does seem to me that a lot of other people, I would say before the series was even out, raised, I would say similar objections, right? The basic question was, do we really need this? Like in the era of fake news, do we really need a show that obscures the legitimacy of, you know, like reporting and like interview authority and information and, you know, mediating politicians and important people, right? And I think the show,

the show seems like it's, you know, I use the word trolling, but the show seems so rooted in misinformation as Sacha Baron Cohen-Schstick, since he's literally, you know, he's working with disguises,

he's working with characters, and he's working with false pretexts for getting people to say things. And that just seems like it strikes accord with the sort of person, who thinks that or who would observe that, you know, a big problem of the past few years in American political culture is the disintegration of legitimacy and media,

or like the disintegration of perceived legitimacy and perceived like straightforwardness in media. Now, I don't know, I totally, I think that that's a real problem, but I also think that, and I also think that, I guess what I think is, Sasha Baron Cohen probably knows that and he's

leaning on that to stir up a discomfort in viewers by design. I think it's supposed to be uncomfortable in that way. But I don't know.

Maybe I'm giving him too much credit. I don't know. And I don't want to be I think if it I thought it was funny, I would be a lot more forgiving

about the moral squeamishness that his method it's like arouse at me. Yeah. I just don't think it's funny and I think as targets don't work except when they do. I'm going to keep watching the show

because when it, that last segment proved to me, I think that it's a, at least part of it is valuable and unique and arresting television. But like, I don't know. I don't know.

I kind of want them to just do Borat 2 or something or just like, be a stay at home dad and let Ila Fisher have the, movie career that she deserves. Well, Kate, I've seen people compare Sasha Baron Cohen to James O'Keefe. You know who James O'Keefe is, right? I do.

He is a dweeb. He's a dweeb. You can also describe him. I'm just going to call him with dweep. I mean, that's a fair description. But so he is a right-wing sting operator. He runs an organization called Project Veritas. and they basically attempt to go undercover

and expose various nefarious liberal agendas. And I guess James O'Keefe himself actually compared Project Veritas to Sasha Barron Cohen recently. And there have been pundits on Twitter saying, like, if you're okay with who is America, then why aren't you okay with Project Veritas? I think it's like an insane comparison because Project Veritas is people aren't mad at Project Veritas only because they employ undercover tactics.

They're mad because they do such a terrible job. Yeah, yeah. The fundamental objection to Project Veritas is more about, well, one, it's about their targets, right? It's that they target, I mean, they really do target sort of like low level employees or they just they target people and basically it's not even a matter of like trick them into saying grotesque things it's more so project veritas videos are about um goading people to say something that isn't even necessarily that controversial per se

but that they can through editing the video yeah make it look like right so much of project Veritas is about video editing and unflattering characterizations of things that are very obviously because of how badly the videos are edited, very obviously taken out of context. And also just a lot of it is from people who are, I mean, not all of it. Like there are sometimes that they will have people in leadership positions of organizations, but a lot of the time Project Veritas is targeting people who don't really have power within organizations. Whereas, like, Satcha Baron Cohen, I think, evades this a bit more carefully, inso much as he's picking political targets, because he, I mean, he really went for the top, didn't he? Like, he really, he, you know. In the good, in the good. In the good, right. Right. But I, I just think that the one huge difference is that product varitizes is positioning itself as like an undercover journalistic operation.

And then Sasha Baron Cohen is positioning himself as an entertainer and comedian. Right. For starters. I mean, Project Veritas also, yeah, their choice of targets, they're manipulative editing, everything. What they're, the products that they're putting out is dishonest. And the product that Sasha Baron Cohen is putting out, is at least like trying to. Well, yeah, let's unpack that because it is dishonest in a way.

Like I think it's important to be honest about that at least, right? That there is a, it's baked in. And I think that part of Satcha Baron Cohen's art is dishonesty. Well, yeah. I think it's important to concede that Satcha Baron Cohen is being dishonest. Right. Like he's definitely interacting with his subjects in dishonest ways. Oh, yeah.

Like I don't want to, I don't want to. I don't want to sit here and like pretend that I think that Sasha Baron Cohen is being honest and James O'Keefe is being dishonest. No, they're both they're both doing this sort of disguise based work. Right. It's just the ends to the ends are obviously different. And obviously like if you're a conservative, you're more likely to be sympathetic toward O'Keefe. And if you're liberal, you're more likely, you know, there's that. There's a simplistic like partisan divide.

But I think even beyond that, it's it's the fact. that James O'Keefe most certainly picks worst targets and also accomplishes most of the shock value of Project Veritas, not through what his subjects say, but how he edits his subjects.

Whereas Sasha Baron Cohen, you know, this is obviously like a produced showtime show. It's obviously a real production, but I think it's very clear that the shock value for a lot of this stuff is in what, it's

with the political stuff is in what these people are saying. Yeah, what they're willing to say on camera. Right. Definitely. And I don't know. I think that's a pretty, I think that's a pretty important distinction. And it's why it's,

it's why even though it's not always funny and certainly overall, I don't know that Sasha Baron Cohen is always funny. It's why I find, I find him valuable despite how uncomfortable he can be. I do. I mean, I do too. I just wish he was better at his job. Yeah. Yeah. I don't necessarily What would it look like? What would it look like if he were better at his job? Instead of doing those bullshit segments, he would have just released the kindergarten guardians video. Yeah. Like the run up to that segment, I thought like lessened its impact because it.

It just, it's sort of muddied the point of the show. Right. I don't know. I just really, when he's good, he is so good that it pisses me off how bad he is when he's bad. Yeah. It's also strange to consider what the point of the show even is, right? Because, and I hate when people do this. You're like, what is the role of comedy and, you know.

It should be to make people laugh. Well, it should. But, okay. but then forget comedy. What is the role of satire? And I think people always sort of lose sight. We're talking about satire, this idea that like, look,

no one's saying that good satire is going to, you know, scuttle a bad piece of legislation or like get Trump impeached. Right? It's almost like there are times when it seems like that's the standard people are holding satire too

of like, this is uncomfortable and it's not really, it's at the end of the day, Trump is still president. so why does it even matter? It's like, well, okay, if that's the bar for Sasha, Warren Cohen or anyone, we may as well not have satire at all, and we should all just be like morose and self-serious.

But I definitely take, I mean, I definitely think you're right in your read of his project, that it feels, I mean, to a fault. It does feel like omnidirectional in a way that people didn't necessarily anticipate and that doesn't feel like it serves, it doesn't really feel like it serves an interesting end. Yeah. And as I said before, like if I thought it was funny,

I would be like way more forgiving. Yeah. It's mainly just that I don't like it. Well, Kate, we make each other laugh. That's all me. My podcast. What?

Like my wife. My podcast. My podcast. All right. Well, that's it from us this week. I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibb. And that's damage control.

We'll see you all again two weeks from now. Yo, check it. Yo, check it. Oh, no. We recording a new damage control this week. We got a special guest. Such a bearing. Wait, that's me.

We got special guest, Agi. Please keep all of this. in the end. No, please don't. Okay.