Borat getting sued by Gypsies & frat boys... [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 12:24 PM on November 15, 2006.

Who isn't suing Borat? That might be a shorter post.

Let's see, first there was the nation of Kazakhstan itself, unwittingly paving the way for Borat to become the most successful comedy in history by threatening a lawsuit in 2005 before throwing cash at a NY Times ad to counter the propaganda.

More recently, the residents of the town used to depict Borat's home are suing as well:

"We want to sue them. They made the world laugh at us," said Marin Marcel, a 34-year-old Roma Gypsy, who along with his neighbors carves out an income by working in local quarries and picking forest fruit. "They taped us without paying us money!"

Whether they're suing for humiliation compensation or just general compensation is unclear. However, they do claim to have received only $5-$7 per day each, which does sound a bit low, even for a depressed economy.

Finally, there's the case of the frisky frat boys: "Do not let a woman EVER, ever, make you who you are!").

Two of the three frat boys, who get drunk with Borat in a trailer and manage to actually give the most unappealing demographic sliver America has to offer an even worse reputation [YouTube vid right], are claiming that, according to TSG: "[the] crew got him and his pals drunk and encouraged them to engage in "behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in."

The Smoking Gun notes that Justin Seay, one of the two "John Does" ought to have deleted his MySpace page before filing:

On his MySpace page, Seay lists "gettin' drunk and havin' a good time" as one of his interests, along with NASCAR and "pretty much any typical guy stuff."

Be that as it may, the main point here is that whether he gets drunk regularly or not, Seay, and the other boys -- as was the excuse with Mel Gibson's rant -- were somehow saying things, and acting in ways, they wouldn't, given a chance to sober up.

Come on.

Drunk makes you do things you otherwise probably wouldn't -- why else get drunk? -- but it doesn't make you an anti-semite and misogynist. It just outs the behavior you're rather too cowardly to engage in on camera... or in front of a Jewish police officer.

But let's entertain the notion for a moment that frat boys may be too weak to handle their liquor without turning into misogynistic sewer-rats. Is it fair to assume that after a few dry months they'll be ingesting The Feminine Mystique and burning their 40+ mags?

Tagged as: drunk, borat

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.