Air Kazakh

When we were watching the MTV Euro music awards recently, Gretchen pondered what Kazakhstan thought of the Borat character (who we rather enjoy). Reading the paper on the way home from Amsterdam tonight, I found the answer:

Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry has 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. Baron Cohen, who portrays a fictitious Kazakh television host, Borat, in his "Da Ali G Show," has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan. 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," a Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yerzhan Ashykbayev, said at a news briefing. "We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind." He declined to elaborate.(Reuters)

(In fairness I guess I wouldn't be happy about Borat's character if I were in their shoes, but their reaction reads like something you would see in The Onion...)