Kazakhstan's government: Comic no laughing matter

The Kazakh government is threatening to take Mr. Cohen to court. Because he's not telling the truth about Kazakhstan? Or because he is?

Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry threatened legal action Monday against a British comedian who wins laughs by portraying the central Asian state as a country populated by drunks who enjoy cow-punching as a sport.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who portrays a spoof Kazakh television presenter Borat in his "Da Ali G Show," has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan, the world's ninth largest country yet still little known to many in the West, on British and U.S. channels.

Cohen appears to have drawn official Kazakh ire after he hosted the annual MTV Europe Music Awards show in Lisbon earlier this month as Borat, who arrived in an Air Kazakh propeller plane controlled by a one-eyed pilot clutching a vodka bottle.

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Cohen's earlier jokes about the Central Asian state include claims that the people would shoot a dog and then have a party, and that local wine was made from fermented horse urine.

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