From the Department of Accomplished Former Historians, we hear of someone who “wrote a dissertation on the role of Jews in the U.S. civil rights movement,” but “decided that rather than sit alone in a library, I’d try and make people laugh.”
And that little boy grew up to be… Sacha Baron Cohen.
But who told him people don’t laugh at professional historians?
The Edge of the American West 
12 comments
December 28, 2007 at 6:34 am
ari
I saw that piece and thought about blogging it. Thief. Also: the few times I’ve seen him interviewed as himself, rather than as one of his characters, he’s amazingly ill at ease. I wonder if that discomfort drives his characters. The whole I-just-do-it-to-make-people-laugh line seems like a dodge (as it does when Jon Stewart says the same thing).
December 28, 2007 at 6:38 am
eric
Jon Stewart, though he seems to do a good job playing “Jon Stewart,” doesn’t otherwise disappear into a role — unlike Cohen, who vanishes into these bizarre personae.
December 28, 2007 at 6:56 am
ari
Yes, my point was just that comedy as cultural commentary is rarely driven only by the quest for a laugh — no matter the comedian’s claims. I actually haven’t heard Jon Stewart say such a thing lately (maybe because, due to the writers’ strike, I haven’t heard Jon Stewart say anything lately). But Baron Cohen, when he emerges from character even for a moment, mumbles his way through that line pretty regularly. I wonder if that’s what he really thinks. Or if he’s just worried that if he allows that he’s actually a sharp critic, he’ll somehow become less funny. Or make less money by losing his middlebrow appeal.
December 28, 2007 at 7:46 am
eric
Or, you know, he doesn’t want to think too hard about why he does what he does, because hey, we need the eggs.
December 28, 2007 at 8:39 am
Jamie T.
Very Niiice.
It will be interesting to see what Stewart and Colbert do upon return without writers. I think Stewart can succeed off the cuff and by doing interviews. I just don’t know how Colbert can do 24 minutes a night in character without writers. I also wonder how the dearth of satirical voices in the run up to the primaries will effect the youth vote.
December 28, 2007 at 8:50 am
ari
I’ve been wondering the same thing, Jamie. But I think the writers will be back before next fall. I don’t have any idea why I think that, of course, I just do.
December 28, 2007 at 9:00 am
eric
I just don’t know how Colbert can do 24 minutes a night in character without writers
I don’t know how he can do it without, himself, writing, and thus becoming a scab. I hope we don’t see some kind of careful legal interpretive dance about what, exactly, we mean by “writing.”
December 28, 2007 at 12:51 pm
SEK
Sacha probably has a bit of an inferiority complex. Also — and having nothing to do with last night’s Yiddish-fest, as entertaining as it was — did you know that Sacha takes notes in Hebrew, lest his marks figure him out? (According to a friend of mine who’s seen them, it’s half-Hebrew, half-transliterated English, but still, quite impressive for a lowly
historiancomedian.)December 28, 2007 at 1:50 pm
matt w
I don’t know how he can do it without, himself, writing, and thus becoming a scab.
In theory he could do it with interviews, but the monologues seem like they’ll either require legal interpretive dancing. Unless they just turn the monologues into interpretive dances.
December 28, 2007 at 1:57 pm
ari
I know we’re now talking about Colbert, but did anyone ever see the Jon Stewart bit on Rumsfeld testifying before congress? It ends with Stewart doing an odd contortion and saying: “Did you see that? He did a dance.” I’ve looked for video but can’t find it. It was hilariously funny. Sorry, the segue is: dancing. Now I must go to dinner.
December 28, 2007 at 2:03 pm
eric
In theory he could do it with interviews
Although I’ve noticed Colbert comes to the table with prepared questions. Is he going to forgo that, too? Really? Like, not even think them up in his head? Clearly he couldn’t write them down.
December 29, 2007 at 8:03 am
Larry Cebula
To clarify, Cohen studied in England, where a dissertation means something different–I think it is the equivalent to an undergraduate senior capstone paper? He does not have a PhD.