Dharma and Borat? Where’d Greg Go?

Yeah, I know, I blogged about this last summer. It deserves a follow-up.

Turns out we have a name of the producer who booked “Borat Sagdiyev” and, in the process, was “tricked” into thinking he really was a Kazakhstan-born journalist – when he’s really a fictional character on an HBO show and now a related hit movie.

Her name: Dharma Arthur. Not long after the incident, she was reassigned from her morning producer duties to a similar capacity in the station’s 5:00pm newscast. Arthur and WAPT parted company this past spring.

While she reportedly has found work at a station in Florida, I sincerely hope she’s learned a valuable lesson from the whole “Borat” situation.
My fear, though, is she hasn’t learned anything.

She recently wrote to Newsweek, “Because of (“Borat”), my boss lost faith in my abilities and second-guessed everything I did thereafter.” Well, sheesh, if I were her boss, I’d put her under the microscope, too. “I spiraled into depression,” she continued to whine, “and before I could recover, I was released from my contract early. It took me three months to find another job, and now I’m thousands of dollars in debt and struggling to keep my house out of foreclosure.”

Uh, excuse me, Dharma. If you really want to know who’s at fault for all of this, look in the mirror. Now, I’m sorry you’ve gone through so much hardship; nightmares I wish on no one. But if you had done just a little extra bit of research instead of, apparently, basing you booking just on what “Borat’s” people gave you, you would have saved yourself headaches and you would’ve also spared WAPT a black eye.

In another article, Dharma was quoted as saying, “I don’t have cable. I have two mortgages.” Well, I hope you had internet access in your WAPT days. If so, all you had to do was enter the name “Borat Sagdiyev” into any internet search engine and I promise you would’ve discovered “Borat” was a work of fiction.

Then as now, may this be a lesson for all of us in the media.