Sacha Baron Cohen’s new series, Who Is America?, is set to premiere on Showtime this Sunday, but the show is still mostly a mystery. All we know so far is the show’s title, that Cohen spent a year “undercover” to shoot it, and at one point he got former VP Dick Cheney to sign a “waterboard kit” on camera. Now, thanks to Sarah Palin, it looks like we know a few more things: That one of Cohen’s new characters might be a disabled veteran, and that he’s still got a knack for making people supremely pissed.
In a new post on her Facebook page, Palin said that she had been “duped” by someone she thinks was Cohen during an interview for a supposed “Showtime historical documentary”—and called the British comedian “evil,” “exploitative,” and “sick.”
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“For my interview, my daughter and I were asked to travel across the country where Cohen (I presume) had heavily disguised himself as a disabled US Veteran, fake wheelchair and all,” Palin wrote. “Out of respect for what I was led to believe would be a thoughtful discussion with someone who had served in uniform, I sat through a long ‘interview’ full of Hollywoodism’s disrespect and sarcasm.”
It’s unclear what exactly an interview of “Hollywoodism” entails, but it likely involved Cohen’s masterful ability to build rapport with an unsuspecting subject and then give them a platform to make a complete fool of themselves.
Finally, Palin says she stormed out of the interview, “much to Cohen’s chagrin,” though it sounds like he’d already gotten plenty of footage to work with. The prank didn’t end there, though. According to Palin, Cohen’s crew “purposefully” drove her to the wrong airport after the interview, causing her and her daughter to miss their flight back to Alaska.
“The disrespect of our US military and middle-class Americans via Cohen’s foreign commentaries under the guise of interview questions was perverse,” she wrote. “Mock politicians and innocent public personalities all you want, if that lets you sleep at night, but HOW DARE YOU mock those who have fought and served our country. Truly sick.” She went on to challenge Showtime to donate all the show’s proceeds to a charity supporting US vets.
Neither Cohen or the network have responded to her enraged Facebook post or confirmed that Palin’s interview will appear in Who Is America?, but if it really was Cohen, it looks like Trump isn’t the only genius who can sniff out a scam. Between this Palin news and the Cheney clip, one thing is for sure—whatever Who Is America? turns out to be, it’s going to be worth a watch. The first episode premieres this Sunday at 9PM on Showtime.
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