Borat is Ali G
The mean-spirited Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is coming soon to a theatre near you. The lead character is played by Sacha Baron Cohen.
Before Borat, Cohen was pretty much only recognized (and mostly in the British Isles) as Ali G. As IMDB describes, “Cohen appears on talk shows in character; he has rarely appeared as his real self.”
In 2005, if you stopped 10 people on the street in London, 9 of them would have known who Ali G was. Some British folks can correct me, but if you’d asked about somebody named Sacha Baron Cohen, I’d guess that 1 or 2 might know who he is (and somebody else might mention a certain figure skater).
From what I can gather, Borat is just Ali G’s schtick–deceiving people into saying or doing amusing things–with a new character. Here’s what’s bizarre: only a minority of news outlets are reporting this fact. I first noticed this watching coverage on TV, but have since done a little experiment in Google News:
Articles mentioning ‘Borat’ - 2020
Articles mentioned ‘Borat’ and ‘Ali G’ - 670
Articles that mention ‘Borat’ but don’t mention ‘Ali G’ - 1300
I don’t think there’s any grand conspiracy, but clearly the movie’s marketing people want to distance Cohen from the Ali G character (a huge success on British television, a failure in the movie).
Incidentally, Borat seems to me to be lifted from one or more Saturday Night Live sketches. Most notably, two wild and crazy guys.
Another incidentally: that photo is of an Industrial Light and Magic employee in costume at the ILM Halloween party.
NorthVanDan 
