Sacha Baron Cohen’s new character Admiral General Aladeen from his movie The Dictator has recently been turned down for several guest spots on not only on BBC television but radio as well in the UK. So far the list of shows afraid to offend terrorist sympathizers includes, The Graham Norton Show, The One Show, Newsnight and The Andrew Marr Show. At first they were all taking the character into consideration but they all decided to just drop him, even two shows on both Radio 1 and Radio 4 dropped him.
Aladeen himself has said, “While I am a huge admirer of state-sponsored censorship, the BBC banning me from their meagre channels is an outrage. Why are they victimising little old me?”
I completely agree with Aladeen, just because he’s a dictator they all treat him like he’s the most evil thing in the world. I think he looks like a nice guy; he’s also got a pretty nice beard; just because he has a beard doesn’t make him evil, they are just judging him on his appearance.
A spokesman for BBC said, “Our chat shows thrive on the spontaneous banter between guests and the presenter, something you don’t get when people come as character. We’d love to have Sacha on as himself.”
Then is it that so hard to ask? Instead of just flat out rejecting Cohen they should of just said that from the beginning and they could have come to a compromise.
We don’t buy the BBC’s answer. We think that the BBC is afraid that The Dictator will offend some of their market. Now ask yourself this, what segment of British society would be offended by a parody of a Colonel Gaddafi type monster?