HOW DRU CATCH SEES IT

The Most Public Way to Forget Something

There is a specific type of person who volunteers for a Sacha Baron Cohen sketch, and there is a specific type of person who then announces a lawsuit when the sketch airs. In Michael Aboud's case, these are the same person - and the second decision is doing considerably more damage than the first.

Cohen's entire method, perfected across 'Borat,' 'Bruno,' and the 2018 'Who Is America?' series featuring the exact same Col Erran Morad character, is to secure genuine, enthusiastic participation from public figures who do not recognize the setup until it is too late. The Morad character is well-documented. He has been on Showtime. He has already convinced U.S. politicians to endorse arming kindergartners in a bit that made international news. Aboud walked into this in 2026 with that entire public record available.

The Lawsuit Is the Press Release

Here is the recursive beauty of the situation: Aboud's lawsuit announcement is functionally a press release about the plastic buttocks. Before he said anything, this story lived in the entertainment press. After he said something, it lives in the political press, the legal press, the comedy press, and here.

Every news outlet covering the lawsuit is now contractually obligated - for clarity and precision - to describe what the buttocks were for and what the rubber penis did. The Guardian did it. Political Wire did it. We are doing it right now. This is not an accident of coverage; this is the specific, foreseeable consequence of announcing a lawsuit against a satirist for making a satirical film.

The Docket Number Is the Punchline

The instinct to sue a satirist for making satire is itself a recognizable political reflex, and it rarely ends well. Courts have repeatedly protected parody and satire as free expression; Cohen has faced these suits before and has a reasonably good track record. But the legal merits are almost beside the point.

Aboud has chosen the most formal, most public, most on-the-record method of telling the world that he, the chair of the El Paso County Republican Party, wore fake plastic buttocks and learned to simulate shooting a gun through them. In a courtroom. Under oath. With a docket number. Cohen's real genius was never the fake buttocks - it was correctly predicting that the subject would hand him a second act.