“Bruno” – following Baron Cohen’s hit “Borat” – is centered around the adventures of a flamboyant gay fashion journalist from Austria. An official from Malaysia’s Film Censorship Board said the movie was considered unacceptable because of its story line, offensive language, jokes and racy nature. She declined to be named, citing protocol.

“It’s banned because the story is based on gay life … There are a lot of sex scenes,” she said. “It’s contrary to our culture.”

Gay sex, or “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” is punishable by up to 20 years in jail and whipping in Malaysia. Sex toys, politically incorrect comments and jokes about religion also irked the censors, she said.

She said censors vetted the movie last month, and the distributor was notified. Ukraine has also banned the film, and some Austrian officials have spoken out against it, but have not taken action. Baron Cohen’s previous movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” made fun of the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan and the United States and was banned in Kazakhstan and Russia.

Malaysia also decided in early September to ban another American hit, the horror film “Halloween II,” because of its gory scenes and excessive violence, the official said. The distributor was informed and can appeal the decision.

A Muslim-majority nation of 28 million people, Malaysia has strict public morality rules, including those applying to entertainment. U.S. R&B star Beyonce Knowles, who is scheduled to perform here on Oct. 25, has promised to wear conservative attire for the show.

Bruno is an over-the-top gay Austrian fashionista with a Nazi streak whose goal is to become the biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler. To do so he travels to America, where he is told he must take on a charitable cause to achieve worldwide fame. So he decides to bring peace to a troubled place he calls “Middle Earth.”

There, he nearly sparks a riot in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem when he struts down the street in a sexed-up Hassidic outfit that includes skintight shorts. On the Palestinian side, he tries to convince a West Bank militant to kidnap him, while giving the man condescending fashion tips. Bruno confuses the popular chickpea spread “hummus” with the Islamic militant group “Hamas” when he tries to bring together Israeli and Palestinian personalities to make peace.

Baron Cohen, an observant, Hebrew-speaking Jew with close ties to Israel, has ribbed the region before. In his 2006 movie Borat, his fake Kazakh language was actually Hebrew and his shtick was peppered with Israeli slang. In Bruno he goes a step further, taking aim at the Middle East’s most sacred cows.

The movie opened worldwide a week ago and became the top grossing film in the U.S. over the weekend. It’s making waves in Israel, too.

The locally shot scenes got big rounds of applause and hearty laughs at a recent Jerusalem screening. But the subjects of his pranks don’t seem to be in on the joke.

“This man, I think he is not a man,” said Ayman Abu Aita, a former member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militant group that has been largely disbanded. “He is not saying the truth about me. He lied.”

In their scene together, Bruno identifies Abu Aita as a “terrorist” and asks to be abducted.

“I want to be famous, and I want the best guys in the business to kidnap me,” Bruno says. “Al-Qaida are so 2001.”

Before Abu Aita has a chance to reply, Bruno suggests that the mustachioed man lose his facial hair. “Because your King Osama looks like a kind of dirty wizard or a homeless Santa,” he says before being kicked out.

In an interview with David Letterman, Baron Cohen, 37, said he set up the meeting in the West Bank with the help of a CIA agent.

Abu Aita’s Israeli-Arab lawyer, Hatem Abu Ahmad, denied his client has been involved in any acts of violence. He said he is preparing a lawsuit against Baron Cohen and Universal Studios alleging that the terrorist reference could get Abu Aita in trouble with the Israelis and the homosexual association could get him killed by Palestinians. “This joke is very dangerous. We are not in the United States, we are not in Europe. We are in the Middle East and the world operates differently here,” Abu Ahmad said.

The jokes apparently had their share of dangers for Baron Cohen as well. His production team said he narrowly escaped an angry mob during his prance in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Jonathan Rosenblum, an ultra-Orthodox columnist, said he hasn’t viewed the scene but said the reaction was to be expected.

“It was offensive. It was meant to be offensive and it succeeded,” he said. “I don’t have any interest in going to the movie but I am sure it will have its fans.”

Yossi Alpher, a former Israeli Mossad officer, and Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister, are apparently not among them.

In a panel Bruno holds with them in the movie, he tries to find common ground.

“Why are you so anti-Hamas? I mean isn’t pita bread the real enemy here?” Bruno asks with a straight face.

The dumbfounded interviewees look awkwardly at each other before taking the bait.

“You think there is a relation between Hamas and Hummus?” Khatib asks.

“Hummus has nothing to do with Hamas,” Alpher insists. “It’s a food. We eat it, they eat it.”

To which Khatib responds: “It’s vegetarian, it’s healthy, it’s beans.”

Both men declined comment for this article. But following the prank, Alpher published his account of the meeting in the Jewish publication The Forward in which he said he became suspicious when he saw Baron Cohen dressed in leather and studs, his face heavily powdered, and his arms and chest shaven.

In the movie, Bruno encourages the Palestinians to return the pyramids and asks Jews why they can’t get along with Hindus.

Among the nuggets not appearing in the movie but said nonetheless, according to Alpher, were: “Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse” and “Vy don’t you Jews and Arabs settle the conflict with a time share on the land?”

According to Movie Line, the original ending planned for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie “Bruno” involved a violent gay bashing. Though the ending has since been changed, audience members for a February screening of the movie say that the film ended with Bruno (Cohen) and his assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammerstan) being attacked at an Arkansas cage match for making out in the ring.

According to writer director Richard Day, an industry figure at the February screening, the original ending cuts to a press event after the cage match where Lutz’s character “is now drooling, seemingly brain-damaged, and in a wheelchair, played for laughs.”

According to Movie Line, the new ending has the couple “embrace domesticity with their adopted baby.” Day and actor Jack Plotnick (the only two gay people invited to the screening) complained after the movie, despite other audience members disagreeing.

“By the time I got to the bashing, the audience started defending the movie,” said Day. “They were annoyed with us for ruining the party.”

The British comedian came in character as Bruno in a towering bearskin hat, a red military waistcoat and tight black shorts. He was accompanied by a group of similarly attired men whose waistcoats showed off their midriffs.

“I just wanted to do something that was flattering for the royal family. Something that the queen – I’m not talking about Elton John – would really appreciate,” said Baron Cohen as Bruno, a gay Austrian fashionista. “You know the British royal family and the Austrians have got a lot in common. We’re still the only people who are proud to wear a swastika.”

Baron Cohen’s flashy appearance at the premiere follows his stunt May 31 at the MTV Awards. As Bruno, Baron Cohen descended into the audience on a wire, ending up with his bare behind in the face of rapper Eminem, who stormed off in a show of anger. Eminem later said he was in on the gag.

“Bruno” begins hitting theaters worldwide early next month, including July 10 debuts in Britain and the United States. The movie is Baron Cohen’s follow-up to his 2006 hit “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” in which he played a clueless journalist on a U.S. tour.

Senator Ron Wyden dropped in to mention that he and Olympia Snowe had added a bailout clause that would have stopped these bonuses, but it mysteriously disappeared. I can’t believe he wasn’t wearing a sign that said “I TOLD YOU SO.”

There was a lot of talk about taxing ‘retention bonuses,’ but I’m not sure I believe that will work for more than one tax year. Won’t everyone just change the name so they start receiving “enhanced-incentive gold stars” or “liquid asset attaboys”?

Talk Me Down
While we certainly have been doing some senseless spending on maintaining Cold War nuclear weapons, it’s one of about three things that hadn’t been threatening to actually bankrupt us lately.

Say goodbye to that! Russia is in talks to put long-range Russian bombers in Cuba and Venezuela, and they’re talking about building up their nuclear arsenal. Because that worked so well the last time. How many cinematic alien invasions will it take to make us realize that we all need to work together?

Rachel welcomed former Senator Chuck Hagel to talk about this exciting new game of Whole World roulette, and fortunately he seemed to be way more into understanding the way our nations intertwine than bear-in-the-woods chest thumping.

Hagel also showed an admirable disgust for choosing party loyalty over doing what you believe is best for the country and said, “There’s no room for that kind of silliness.” STOP MAKING ME LOVE YOU, CHUCK HAGEL.

Ms. Information
Ms. Information is always one of my favorite segments. Tuesday’s was no exception but for one horrific flaw: Ms. Maddow, please don’t ever again make my brain process the phrase “Cheney doodle.”

Now that you can’t banish that phrase from your mind either, I’ll tell you that the head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships met with an exciting group of far-right Christian visionaries that we might as well call The Coalition of People Who Make My Normal Christian Friends Cringe and Hide Under the Dinner Table.

Rachel also noted that Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno character puts the moves on Ron Paul in his upcoming movie. Which officially moves the film up in my ranks from “I don’t care if it’s just like ‘Borat’” to “How many tickets am I allowed to buy and when?”

The Dark Side
I hope that last story built up enough of a whimsy cushion around your psyche, because it’s time for news about CIA prisons. The Red Cross, who the U.S. agreed should be the monitor of such things, has released a report saying that we tortured prisoners at secret “Black Site” prisons.

Mark Danner, author of “Torture and Truth” stopped by to make your shame and rage circuits fight for supremacy.

Danner mentioned that in one of the high-level White House MEETINGS about torturing people, Ashcroft said “History will not judge us kindly.” How do you have that thought and not have a follow-up thought on maybe knocking off the waterboarding people until they vomit?

Please watch the clip. I promise that things get fun again for the Cocktail Moment.

This Way Out?
Dr. David Kilcullen, military strategist, author of “The Accidental Guerilla,” and general Aussie bad-ass, came by to talk about the real cost of victory in Afghanistan. He made an interesting distinction between knowing how to do things and knowing whether to do them, then suggested that the real way to go is to “take non-military steps to deal with local grievances.”

He emphasized making social repairs on a small scale and carefully using local standards as a guideline.

Cultural anthropologists, did you hear that?! NOW IS YOUR TIME! Look up from your field notes and see your introverted, bespectacled Bat Signal in the sky! Stop throwing grad school parties organized around hilarious joke themes that only twelve other people understand and GET IN THERE!

Cocktail Moment
The Obamas have continued the hideous Chicago tradition of dumping green dye into any fluid within arm’s reach on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not just talking about turning the river into a ribbon of vomit; I had a nasty flashback to my bartending days, when I was forced to add cheap green food coloring to cheap beer all night long.

Master mixologist Dale DeGroff cheered me back up and sent Rachel straight over the moon by showing up to make some spectacularly beautiful Irish coffees.

You are about to see Ms. Maddow in full-blown cocktail bliss. Enjoy.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day Recovery Day to us all.

“We had a contract for cage fighting. We were deceived,” said Dwight Duncan, president and CEO of Four States Fair Grounds in Texarkana, where the first of two Arkansas fights raised suspicions last month.

Matt Labov, a Los Angeles-based publicist for Baron Cohen, said he had no comment Monday about the faked fights. One of Baron Cohen’s movies is due out next year.

The day after the June 5 Texarkana bout, Fort Smith’s convention center hosted “Blue Collar Brawlin.’” Fort Smith police Sgt. Adam Holland said organizers told him a character named “Straight Dave” would goad a planted audience member into the ring for a fight.

The two men would then wrestle, rip away some of their clothes and share a brief kiss reminiscent of one between Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell in the film “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”

Producers said “there would be a romantic embrace,” Holland said. “They said it was kind of to essentially make fun, poke fun at wrestling – two guys rolling around on the floor, all sweaty.”

An elaborate array of mounted and handheld video cameras caught the crowd of 1,600’s reaction as the two men “went right up to the line” of the city’s morality laws, Holland said. The two men stripped down to their underwear, kissed and rubbed on each other, the sergeant said.

The audience, as well as local fighters drawn to take part in the show, became enraged. “It set the crowd off lobbing beers,” Holland said. “They had beers in plastic cups. Those things can get some distance on them actually.”

Holland said it took officers about 45 minutes to clear the convention center, as the two actors sprinted away through a specially set-aside tunnel.

Those in attendance were told by several signs on display that they’d be filmed, Holland said, and signed waivers before the event. Convention center sales director Karin Hobbs declined to name the event’s sponsor Monday.

Baron Cohen became a national celebrity after his 2006 hit movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” in which he played a bumbling reporter from the Central Asia nation.

News of the faked cage fights comes as Baron Cohen is in production of a movie titled “Bruno,” named after the gay Austrian fashion reporter he developed for “Da Ali G Show.” Baron Cohen, in the guise of Bruno, often interviewed hapless subjects in the South.

If the cage match visits came from Baron Cohen, it wouldn’t be the first time Arkansas fell for a practical joke. In 2000, then-Gov. Mike Huckabee fell for a prank and congratulated Canada for preserving its icebound Parliament, calling it a “national igloo.”