Sacha Baron Cohen, working as a tool.

Rolling Stone has an interview with Sacha Baron Cohen that's billed as his only out-of-character interview. (Via Metafilter.) He's really smart -- smart enough to play idiots brilliantly -- and I'm not positive I want to hear him explain the theory behind it. Is it a little like a magician ruining his magic by revealing what the trick is? Let's read it anyway:

"Borat essentially works as a tool," Baron Cohen says. "By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it's anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism. 'Throw the Jew Down the Well' [a song performed at a country & western bar during Da Ali G Show] was a very controversial sketch, and some members of the Jewish community thought that it was actually going to encourage anti-Semitism. But to me it revealed something about that bar in Tucson. And the question is: Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism.

"I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic."

Baron Cohen doesn't make this grand statement with confidence. He makes it shyly, as if he's speaking out of turn. It's interesting to watch Baron Cohen get bashful, because it is the exact opposite of the characters he portrays....

There is a certain sadism to Baron Cohen, who seems most comfortable when making others uncomfortable. To some degree, Borat and Ali G are safe refuges for him, masks he can hide behind. If everything that comes out of your mouth is parody, then you never have to be accountable for what you say -- because you didn't really mean it anyway. You only said it to lead your interview subjects to the thin line between patience and intolerance in order for their true personality to reveal itself....

"I think I'd find it hard to," he admits. "I think you can hide behind the characters and do things that you yourself find difficult."

One hears this sort of thing about many comics. It's really the biggest cliché about comics, isn't it?

James Lipton -- of "Inside the Actor's Studio" -- describes the release form he signed before letting Ali G interview him and what an obvious red flag it was. (Go to 17:45 in the audio clip.) The person you're talking to may not be the person he says he is. You waive your right to sue. He may do things that will embarrass you. Etc. I just watched the episode from Season 1 of "Da Ali G Show" where Lipton appears, and it's very clear that Lipton understands the situation. Why did he do it? "I looked at this guy, and he looked very funny and very clever." Lipton says the interview went on for 2 hours and expresses admiration for the improvised performance. Lipton says that in the end, after hearing Ali G say all sorts of racist and sexist things and worrying about how the edit would be done, he told him that if they did not use the material that establishes that Lipton was not complicit in the racism and sexism, he would test that release contract in a lawsuit. In the final cut, we see Lipton firmly chiding Ali G about his language. But Lipton is unusually smart and he -- of all people -- is onto the ways of actors. Easy as it may be to see what's in that release and that Cohen is an actor... a lot of people aren't going to see it.