There's a reason why Borat was such an easy character to play.
It's because people like this give South Asia a reputation for not knowing the what the hell is going on.


I came across this photo in an Argentine newspaper this past Tuesday. It was taken in Islamabad, Pakistan.

According to the caption, it was also taken at an anti-Taliban rally.

"Someone desperately needs to explain to these guys the nuances of the English language," was the first thing I thought.

Later that night, I was on Skype talking to a guy who lives in New Delhi. His name is Bahar, and he is a photo editor for the AFP, sort of the French version of the Associated Press, in charge of South Asia. I was interviewing Bahar for this story I'm writing about him for a UVa alumni magazine. Not realizing that this photo was an actual AFP photo, I excitedly began to describe to him what I had come across only hours before, about to reach the point in the story where I start mimicking a high school cheerleader when he cut me off:

"Are you talking about the 'Go Taliban Go' one?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "How did you know? Did you see that?"

"Yeah," Bahar said, chuckling like a person who knows that the next words out of his mouth are only going to cause an even bigger commotion, "I edited that photo."

You can guess how I reacted to that.

He laughed as I yelled into the microphone. "I actually have a lot of other photos from that series. One of them has a guy with a 'Go America Go' sticker."

He promised to email it to me when he gets back from Kashmir. And I promised to print it out and tape it to my fridge.