Talk politics.

Some of you may've already watched the new parody/mockumentary, call it whatever you want, by always scandalous comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Ali G, Borat, Brüno, Adm. Gen. Aladeen, etc. It's works like these that have made him one of the most famous comedians of our time. He's the master of fake characters which he puts in various real-life situations, essentially trolling people into doing and saying stupid things, while revealing their true character. It's essentially all about putting a mirror in front of society and making it have a long hard look at itself - and often what it sees there is not very pleasing.

Who Is America makes no exception. Despite its shortcomings, like some of his newly invented characters appearing to be too flat (despite the obvious attempt to make them look archetypal), and his message ultimately being a bit convoluted and, as some critics argue, failing to fully answer its own question in the end, he did have some direct hits indeed. Like the spoof with Dick Cheney, or that disastrous and outright bizarre appearance of Jason Spencer, who became Cohen's first real casualty after resigning from office because of his shenanigans in front of the camera. Some, like Sarah Palin, have expressed outrage from being duped into saying stupid things (like she doesn't do it all the time anyway) - although her interview mysteriously failed to make it to the screen, unlike that with OJ Simpson. Other "victims" of Cohen's snares, like Bernie Sanders, were more gracious during and after their interviews.

There were more controversial moments as well, like reality TV celebrity Corinne Olympios basically being coerced into taking part in an "interview" with one of Cohen's fake characters, which is not cool at all.

All in all, though, most of his characters did manage to impress - especially that Israeli colonel who teased a number right-wingers into revealing their true thoughts on gun rights, torture, human rights, race, etc. Other characters included an Alex Jones style conspiracy theorist of a hillbilly, an overly zealous progressive hippie tree-hugger who was like a cartoon of everything right-wingers hate about liberals, an ex prisoner wannabe artist who reveals just how hollow the world of high-nosed art is, an eccentric Italian billionaire who's into charity for the publicity, and a Finnish vlogger who unpacks children's toys, making his interlocutors look dumb in the process of conversation.

The scandals started right from the onset, where senators were seen calling for arming children, reading fake scientific data with gusto as long as the "interviewer" appeared to agree with them and his seemingly softball (but quite leading) questions suited their narrative (while the science-y terms included were actually those of famous pop performers), or elected representatives yelling racial expletives and showing their bare ass as part of their purported anti-terrorist training (this last one cost one of them their job, although they were already pretty much a goner at that point, politics-wise).

Who Is America paints a unflattering picture of right-wingers in America, the first reaction on seeing it being, hell, is THIS what America is like? And these people are voting, governing, setting society's agenda!? For real? God help us all!

But then again, it's just one half of America. Or maybe, more precisely, an extraordinarily well organized and disproportionately influential minority thereof. In any case, the part that Cohen chose to show us. Of course we shouldn't expect that he'd aim for fairness and balance, in part because none really exists. Reality does have a liberal bias, as we often like to joke, and all those people he met and skillfully lured into revealing the ugly side of their own chosen ideology, have found themselves largely at the wrong side of history on many issues of import, even if they don't realize it. They'll be judged by history, as will all those phony champions of the "cause" that they've sent into office to decide the fate of the rest of society. What remains for the rest of us is to hope that'll happen sooner rather than later, work even harder towards achieving that, and try not to lose courage in the face of all this staggering ignorance, stupidity and bigotry.

It's an incomplete picture that Cohen has painted, but then again, he never presumed otherwise. Suffice to just prompt a few people to do some thorough self-introspection, and possibly, hopefully, change a thing or two about themselves.

Who Is America has been released in a total of 7 episodes, half an hour each. Recommended.