Cohen is a straight man who won't, in real life, ever suffer any blowback from perpetuating gay stereotypes or fomenting gay hatred.

He will say it's all a joke, it doesn't "really" perpetuate stereotypes or incite hatred because he's just playing a character, an argument which is based on somehow getting nuanced thinking from the very homophobes who are such ignorant, bigoted rubes that they fell for his shtick in the first place.

What fun! We Smart, Clever, ever-so-Aware people get to guffaw at the Small, Stultified, Foolish People. Sorry, not even close to being funny. Minstrelsy is mintrelsy. (which is hard to spell)

BTW BRUNO is also pretty damn racist. And being a hysterical stick-up-my-butt shrew, I don't find it funny.

I personally would have found Bruno less offensive if, rather then start out at an obviously fake stereotype that seems to mock us.

If he would approach as a perfectly well mannered man that happens to be gay, but as the homophobia of the person comes to light he starts devolving more and more into the ridiculous stereotype seeing how far he can push it until the person realizes how ridiculous it is, then it would be clear to everybody that the point is to make fun of the homophobe not Bruno.

(Weird, my spellchecker says Homophobe is not a word and corrects it with Homophone =/)

I think if a white man made a movie where a white man wore blackface, and satirised stereotypes about African Americans, it would be considered racist and unacceptable.

I don't see how a straight man writing a movie with a straight actor satirising gay culture is any different.

there's never anything funny about cruelty, abuse, exploitation. buying and selling babies, entrapping people, inflaming people isn't funny. i get the joke. as a disabled 65 year old gay man, i don't need to know about homophobia. cohen does not reveal anything new. I already know what hate is and it isn't funny. it's simply abusive. all cohen does is build barriers between people, and in reality people are better than that. an old quaker lady once told me that if you live like god's love is at the heart of every human, then your life will justify that choice. cohen tells me there is no hope, and even if he's right, that's not how i want to live. and he isn't right. i know.

I always resent it when a non-Asian weighs in on whether or not a performance or piece of writing is racist against Asians - my knee-jerk reaction is generally, "You don't get to tell me whether or not I should be offended or pissed off." So I won't weigh in on that core question. The one thing I will say after seeing the film is this:

However you judge this as a piece of art, good or bad, there is no doubt in my mind that this is a piece of performance art. It's daring, it's dangerous, it's provocative, and I have to say, I laughed in horror, glee, with a variety of other emotions mixed in.

This may not be Lenny Bruce, but it IS art of a kind and I think that makes it entirely different from THE GOODS.

I believe Bruno was successful because it has forced people to talk about these issues - left or right - people are having discussions, reading what other people have to say and talking about racism, exploitation, homophobia. Cohen made this a comedy because he knew a lot of people would be curious to see it. And they did. And here we are, posting comments, reading articles, following the Twitter trends and talking about it over and over again. Sure, I didn't agree with all parts of the movie, but Cohen certainly knows how to push the envelope and for that, you have to give the guy some credit.

http://www.youtube.com/v/x9CSnlb-ymA - Everyone's a little racist video

Ed Note: Changed to just a link since we don't allow for embedded videos in the comments section.