The TIME 100

Sacha Baron Cohen has created uniquely outrageous characters for our uniquely outrageous times. He does offend some people's sensibilities, but the youth of today are offended if they're not offended. If you want to be the kind of comic who changes minds about issues like prejudice, you must cross the line occasionally or you're not going far enough.

He has gigantic talent as a physical comedian, and no shortage of balls, particularly when, as Borat, he fights for breath under the fattest naked man's butt ever seen onscreen.

At only 35, Baron Cohen has already invented a new archetype, as original as Chaplin's Little Tramp. It's one thing to portray a vaguely Eastern European, naively anti-Semitic, sexist, insensitive but somehow lovable lout. It's another to risk your life at a rodeo to sing the fictional national anthem of Kazakhstan to the tune of The Star-Spangled Banner. Trust me, I know a little something about the consequences of messing up The Star-Spangled Banner.

The bigot comes to America and insults its most genteel members, agrees with its most ignorant, and sets out to pursue the Big Breasted Virgin Blonde, the real American male dream. He gets broken, abandoned, betrayed and cuckolded, and then born again. And at long last, he finds his true love in the form of a fat black hooker with the proverbial Heart of Gold.

Her grand reception as an iconic American bride brought back home to Kazakhstan was a great way of saying that the world is growing smaller and less tribal. The heart of America honored by Arabs, Jews and vice versa, and versa vice! That is NIIIICE!!!

Comedian Roseanne starred in her own sitcom for nine years