NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Sacha Baron Cohen pranking the wingnuts, and the wingnuts attacking him for it as if he were running a sleazy journalistic sting rather than doing his usual genius thing of getting people to reveal themselves on camera.

This is another example of why conservatives always wind up making culture war into a war on culture -- they don't understand the elemental appeal of comedy as a way of puncturing pretensions, and can only make it comprehensible to themselves by converting it to something their shriveled imaginations can grasp -- in this case, James O'Keefe.

Among the outtakes was one of the smaller fry caught in Cohen's net: "Utah gun rights activist Janalee Tobias," as the Deseret News reported. Interestingly, Tobias seems to be aping the victimization shtick that Sarah Palin pulled on Cohen: What she did on the show, Tobias swears, "goes against everything she stands for when it comes to gun safety and children." She says she only did that stuff -- "held a .22-caliber pistol cloaked in a stuffed toy puppy — the puppy pistol — and fed it bullets shaped like crayons to kill the bad guys," among other things, the News explains -- because Cohen "made me," though Tobias doesn't say how. Also, "I objected the entire time, but I am sure [Cohen] will not show (that)." Not bad, though it lacks the mad poetry of an actual Palin joint.