Niiiiice... Why Borat Matters

I must say that I'm tired of the criticism from people who don't understand Sacha Baron Cohen and his character Borat. Why is his humor important and not entirely offensive? Well, in the words of the artist:

Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudices, whether it's anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism. 'Throw the Jew Down the Well' was a very controversial sketch, and some members of the Jewish community thought it was actually going to encourage anti-Semitism. But to me it revealed something about that bar in Tuscon. And the question is: did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism.

And this view on anti-Semitism in some way inspired by his stuides of the Holocaust:

I remember, when I was in university, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.'

When I was in Berlin, the Borat movie was very popular. I only wish that I knew with confidence that Baron Cohen's anti-anti-Semitic message resonated more than the crude anti-Semitic "humor" that was intended to display the former.