The Real Kazakhstan

I have seen the Borat movie as well, and it was interesting to learn a little about the real country of Kazakhstan. While I understand why Kazakhstanis would be offended by the movie, but I think the fact that we in the West really do know so little about many countries that have not been in our newspapers is more offensive than the actions of the character (Blogger's spell check does not even recognize Kazakhstan as a word.) After all, the movie is not intended to make fun of Kazakhstan or even to say anything about it at all. The movie makes fun of Americans more than anything (The premise of the movie is a documentary on America, and on some level it does serve that function.) An NPR "Morning Edition" on the movie mentions that the Kazakhstani government has taken out four-page ads in American newspapers in response to the movie. Somehow I do not think these will have much of an effect because, as the movie illustrates, the type of American who would believe that Borat is an accurate representation of Kazakhstan would probably not care to know the truth.
There were times during the movie that I was not sure whether to laugh or to cringe, so I did some of both. The instinct to cringe is due to the fact that there are people who believe the terribly offensive things that Borat says (some of those people are in the movie.)