In My Country There Is Problem

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"In My Country There Is Problem" is the formal title of a song (also known as "Throw the Jew Down the Well" after the song's key line) from the Da Ali G Show episode "Peace" that Borat Sagdiyev (the fictional Kazakh journalist played by Sacha Baron Cohen) sings in a number of scenes, most notably in front of a country music club in a bar located in Tucson, Arizona. The song has become controversial due to the fact that it is highly antisemitic.

1 Analysis
2 Reactions and criticisms
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Analysis

Jody Rosen, writing for Slate, states that Borat manages to offend everyone:

Borat's performance of "In My Country There Is Problem (Throw the Jew Down the Well)" on an episode of Da Ali G Show. It's a densely packed piece of sociopolitical parody: an incitement to pogrom ("Throw the Jew down the well/ So my country can be free/ You must grab him by his horns/ Then we have a big party") sung by a British Jew disguised as a Central Asian bumpkin before a whooping, Bud-swilling audience at a Tucson, Ariz., honky-tonk. It's hilarious. It's catchy. And it's a perfect distillation of Borat's satirical attack, designed to offend and indict just about everyone: Old Europe and Middle America, fulminating right-wingers and piously PC liberals, in addition to Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman.^[1]

[edit] Reactions and criticisms

Public reaction to Throw the Jew Down the Well has varied. Most have treated as comedy. Some have questioned its delivery outright such as Abraham Foxman and Anti-Defamation League who have argued that audiences may lack the sophistication to understand the nuances of Cohen's comedy.^[2]