Throw The Jew Down The Well

Album: Borat (2006)
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Songfacts®:

  • When Kinky Friedman wrote "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore", he could not have realized that was because they'd started making them like Sacha Baron Cohen instead; he was born in October 1971, around three years before Friedman released his song. The Cambridge-educated Baron Cohen's media career got off to an unpretentious start, but in 1998 it took off with the character he created, Ali G, a none-too-bright rapper. Since then, he has shown exactly how unbigotted he really is, and has managed to insult and offend people across a broad political spectrum.

    The acoustic number "Throw The Jew Down The Well," which he wrote and performed initially on the Da Ali G Show, is also known as "In My Country There Is Problem," the country concerned being Kazakhstan, and the performer Borat Sagdiyev, generally known simply as Borat, another of Baron Cohen's creations, this time an anti-Semitic journalist who later goes walkabout in the United States and performs the song to the apparent approval of a redneck audience.
  • Unsurprisingly, "Throw The Jew Down The Well" attracted the attention of the Anti-Defamation League, but possibly mindful of the bloody nose it was given by Frank Zappa over "Jewish Princess," and the fact that Baron Cohen is a Jew, it adopted a softer approach, warning simply that some people might not share his sophisticated sense of humor.
  • "Throw The Jew Down The Well" is not entirely out of synch with reality; in his 1993 book The Fatal Embrace: Jews And The State, Benjamin Ginsberg expounds the thesis that throughout history, Jews have risen to positions of great power and influence with ruling élites, and as these élites have faded, both the power and the stock of Jewry as a whole has fallen with them.

    Baron Cohen is a student of Jewish history, and will certainly be aware of Ginsberg's thesis, if not of his book. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 3

Comments: 2

  • Zabadak from London, EnglandEr, exactly how many CDs were burned in the 19th century...?
  • Roman from Barrie, Onwith the creation of new technology and entertainment availability beyond the control of governments it is very unlikely that we will see music censorship and the burning of cd's etc. which was very common back in the nineteenth century. It is artists like Mr. Cohen that keep the concept of freedom of speech alive for the rest of us
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