Who Is America? – Sarah Palin segment never airs on Showtime

Throughout the promotional process for the new Sacha Baron Cohen – Showtime series Who is America?, there was talk about Sarah Palin. The former Vice-Presidential candidate had posted a lengthy message on social media about the segment she took part in, blasting Cohen as “evil” while also ripping Showtime and its parent company.

Well, here’s the thing — despite all of the promotion (mostly inflicted by Palin herself), there was no actual segment on the show itself. The season finale aired on Showtime tonight and while OJ Simpson was a part of it (in a rare TV appearance), there was no former Alaska Governor.

As for the reasoning behind this move, we have to go back to what Showtime’s David Nevins had to say on the subject at the TCA Summer Press Tour: It may not have been up to the standard that Cohen has for most of his segments. If he didn’t think that it was funny enough, or worth the trouble, he may have just opted to not use it. The editing process was a little bit different than some other series out there, at least in that he was making his decisions on what to include a little bit closer to the episodes than you see with some other shows. He also probably filmed significantly more segments than what we saw to air — this is a show about humor and/or shock value, and there is no point in Cohen including people and interviews on the show that he doesn’t think will boost his credibility.

Regardless of the Palin omission, we do think that Cohen fans probably found enough worthy material elsewhere — even though personally Who Is America? is never really our brand of comedy since it relies strictly on public embarrassment to achieve its goal. (Granted, though, some of the people who appeared here lacked common sense.)

Were you surprised that the Palin – Who is America? segment never aired? Share in the comments.