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Austin Rhodes is a conservative radio host based in Augusta, Georgia. Early in August 2017, Rhodes conducted an on-air interview with a long-haired man, identified as Dr. Nira Cain, a professor of gender and women's studies at Reed College in Portland.
To his surprise, Rhodes later learned that he had actually interviewed the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Rhodes now says that the interview was "definitely" for Cohen's new Showtime show, Who's America? which begins Sunday.
Rhodes, who shared his story with local media when it happened, was the first political conservative known to publicly admit to having been snookered for Cohen's new project. This week, the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, Congressman turned radio host Joe Walsh and former Alabama Senate candidate, Justice Roy Moore , all declared that they had been deceived by Cohen. Former ABC News host Ted Koppel also shared his story with The Hollywood Reporter .
Rhodes stated that the trick began on July 26, 2017 by a producer named "Sarah Taylor" that he shared exclusively with THR . Taylor said that she was working on a series called Bridging The Divide that would be broadcast on Showtime owned by CBS or CBS. "The show is centered around trying to find a middle ground in the midst of our deeply divided partisan times," she said.
Taylor's complete email, also addressed to the producer of Rhodes, is reproduced below:
Hi Bill and Austin,
Austin, I understand that you are on vacation this week but I wanted to make sure this opportunity was not lacking. Bill, hoping you can help me?
I am a former newspaper producer based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. I am currently working with Bright Harbor Media to produce a series tentatively called "BRIDGING THE DIVIDE" for CBS Corp. The show is centered around trying to find a middle ground in the midst of our deeply divided partisan times. It should be broadcast in the fall on CBS or Showtime.
As part of this project, we are bringing a convinced liberal into the conservative regions of Georgia, and we invite him to converse with the workers who elected the president. Asset. We will film his interactions and basically see what happens in this "fish out of water" experience. We hope that there is a common ground, but we are also realistic. The goal of the show is simply to have the two parties talk.
We would love to hear from you live. As a conservative leader and radio icon in Georgia, we would like you to ask him if he has learned anything and allow our Liberal to ask questions and answer questions. Like you, our Liberal has strong opinions. It should be a very lively conversation, and our Liberal is open to anything that happens to him. We really believe that you and your radio station would be perfect for our TV show.
We will film "BRIDGE DIVISION & # 39; next week! Could you allocate air time on the radio to speak directly with our Liberal, live on the air?
I am happy to explain more or answer any questions you may have. You can reach me at: [redacted]
Thanks
Sarah Taylor
ww.brightharbormedia.com
Rhodes also shared his version of events with THR :
Contrary to what many critics say about talk radio, worthwhile hosts are actively looking for guests and interlocutors who share dissenting opinions and points of view and stand out from the usual rate. This is certainly the approach that I have adopted in the 26 years I have hosted Augusta, Georgia 's most popular radio show. The listeners know my center-right point of view well, and frankly, exchanging high-fives and sittings in an echo chamber makes the afternoon rather boring.
So, last year, my producer was contacted Working with a documentary crew documenting the "great American political divide", highlighted by the election of President Trump, we were intrigued.
According to the project presented by Sarah Taylor (as she called her), her team sent "Liberal academics spoke out in the heart of Trump country to discuss their differences with the Conservatives in order to" improve communication and seek a more constructive coexistence.All this would be recorded by a professional documentary filming team, so conversations and exchange of points of view could be edited together for a series of Showtime called Bridging The Divide . (It's really an intriguing idea – a pity that someone does not really do it!)
There was a limited communication between the original agreement for participate in the segment and the day the crew arrived with "Dr. Cain "
" Dr. Cain "arrived shortly after 3 pm the broadcast began, and his escort crew apologized profusely for running late.We now know that this was part of their plan ingenious to keep my team slightly out of balance, and it worked like a charm.Purchase forms were hurriedly filed in front of me and my producer while we were navigating in a light equipment and its complex that s & rsquo; was all around us, all this was going on during a three-minute commercial and news break that we were producing and producing actively and simultaneously.
I was not given the name of Only when we were on the air, but I immediately googled it, and I came across what I know now was a phony website pushing some oddly named books and several lecture series These books appeared on Amazon, but the links to buy them did not go anywhere.
And what a show he was! When I first met this very tall and oddly dressed man, I said live: "Well, my God, it looks like you're coming straight from the central cast." If I did not know better, I'd say you could be Fred. Armisen disguised. "
Well, it was not Armisen, but I was not very far away."
What followed was 90 minutes of my first and only trip in the radio version of The Twilight Zone with a guest who was either the most surprisingly bizarre left-wing extremist in the country or a complete fool.To be honest, I believed at the time that it was the two.
My hat left for his team, which kept my producer and me out of the interview by constantly adjusting our wired microphones (for the documentary) and turn on every moment we were out of business. "Dr. Cain's is rushed to every commercial break and news to ask for relief in the bathroom because of what he's described as a kind of intestinal distress." down, a team of professionals has adjusted his makeup.)
Among Dr. Ca's "Best Interview" successes in figured the US military's call "an active terrorist organization", saying that "The Dukes of Hazzard" is like The Southern Version of Roots, " and my favorite, claiming that "White supremacists are responsible for most gun deaths in America. "
At one point, it appeared to me that the stupidity of his remarks meant we were probably" put on ", but it never occurred to me to what extent
The interview was abruptly terminated, without notice, when he failed to return from his last sprint to the toilet.We did it for about 90 minutes, and his producer apologized for Dr. Cain's gastrointestinal collapse and his subsequent outing to seek relief.
Throughout his scandalous appearance, many listeners thought that Dr. Cain's absurdities being constituted.We probably received between 40 and 50 emails during Cain's interview, speculating that his appearance was "performance art" – that is, the biggest justification for conservatism ever aired in the world.
Then we received a call from a listener who specifically asked us not to name him, who quickly solved the mystery. At one point, my producer mentioned the name of the supervising producer of the "documentary" on the air: Todd Schulman. The listener told us that Schulman was the man who had ensured his participation as a guest in the infamous "Southern Dinner Scene" in the hilarious film of Cohen Borat . A quick check of the IMDB revealed that Schulman was connected to virtually every project that Cohen had starred in going back to Da Ali G Show including Cohen's new show.
I was baffled.
a fan of Cohen's work for years, and I saw Borat probably 20 times from beginning to end. How on earth did I miss that it was Sacha Baron Cohen? When I replayed the show, literally the next day, her voice was obvious, despite a clever attempt to conceal the voice we heard in countless dialects and characters.
I was asked if I worried about how I would be interpreted in what we now know to be Cohen's new show, Who is America? It all depends on the edition of the piece, they even use it at all. Obviously, my conversation with the character of "Dr. Nira Cain" was broadcast live as it happened, so whatever we hear or see, we still have the original program to clarify the context or tone if necessary.
. My biggest regret is not being able to shake hands with Sacha Baron Cohen or interview him (like himself).
I hope we can put it in place. I would say that he owes me one.
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