More from the department of BDS and anti-Zionism. Yes, the Dictator was and remains dumb and offensive, and yes, a racist movie. But why dredge it up now as if it’s “the latest” thing that we need to be talking about? What has Baron-Cohen done lately to pull this kind of animus.

The timing and the key to this rant by Steven Salaita, which you can read here,  is how Salaita is posing the question, “What is Baron Cohen?” The “descriptors” include “potty-mouthed prankster, a religious zealot, a white male,” a “Zionist,” and finally, at the end, “an apparatchik of Hollywood.”

Alongside the caricature of a caricaturist,  its’ the question that sticks. Not a who, but a what is Baron Cohen. The very form of the question indicates the way movement-BDS leaders like Salaita “dehumanize” “the enemy.” The actor is not a subject or a person, but a “what” or an…