Crunch time for Kazakhstan in ‘Borat’ spat

Say you’re a beacon of nuclear disarmament, a ray of public education, a breadbasket of exportable grain and a veritable gush of oil. The brand image you’re hawking is “corridor of reform.” But along comes a TV sketch and a major motion picture that peg you as rabidly anti-Semitic, fiercely backward and unspeakably kinky. What’s a country to do? If you’re Kazakhstan, and the movie is Borat, you do what anyone with a GDP of $124 billion would do: you call in a brand marketer.