Inside the Beltway

Go figure

“Very odd,” says our source. “They sat at a table in the back.”

Referring to the intriguing trio of Pennsylvania Republican Sen. ArlenSpecter, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and his wife, Valerie Plame, of CIA-leak fame, sharing a luncheon table yesterday at Charlie Palmer Steak restaurant.

‘Curious and odd’

Rep. Charles W. “Chip” Pickering Jr., Mississippi Republican, joins former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr and one-time presidential hopeful Alan Keyes as unwitting co-stars of the outrageous new film comedy “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

But don’t count on Mr. Pickering watching the satirical mockumentary, which stars British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

“He hasn’t seen it, and I don’t expect him to see it. It’s not his style of movie,” Brian Perry, the congressman’s spokesman, tells Inside the Beltway. “He usually goes to movies where he can take the kids with him, and obviously this is not one for his kids.”

Mr. Pickering paid scant attention to Borat’s skeletal camera crew while speaking about evolution during a Pentecostal revival meeting in Mississippi, and he wasn’t as upset as others to wind up in the film.

“He was speaking to a group, and he is fine with what he was saying to the group,” Mr. Perry explains. “I think he thought it was a curious and odd incident.”

Meanwhile, several other unsuspecting victims of Borat are lining up to sue the filmmaker, including a $30 million lawsuit filed by villagers in the Romanian community of Glod, which depicts Borat’s Kazakhstan home.

In addition, the Kazakhstani government is weighing legal action, angry that Borat presents the country and its people in a “derogatory” way. A pair of University of South Carolina fraternity brothers have also filed suit.

The film studio, 20th Century Fox, has countered that the plaintiffs “may claim that they were tricked into ‘making fools out of themselves’ and becoming ‘unsuspecting players,’ ” but they “never contend … that bigoted and misogynistic statements were put into their mouths.”

Skipping away

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