"We do not rule out that Mr. Cohen is serving someone's political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way," Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev said in a press conference on the issue. The New York Times later argued that their attempts to set the record straight resulted only in inflating the film’s worldwide profile.
More to the point, Borat did no damage to Kazakhstan's image but the Kazakh government and media reaction did.
Yes, there is a lesson to be learned here.
