Sacha Baron Cohen is or is not banned from the Oscars

Sacha Baron Cohen is invited to the Academy Awards on Sunday because he’s one of the stars of ‘Hugo’, which is nominated for Best Picture. And apparently that’s terrifying to some people because of his habit of showing up places in character to promote his new movies.

New movies like the one where he plays a murderous Arab dictator, for example.

the Academy is making it clear that Cohen is not welcome to use the red carpet as a platform for a promotional stunt for his upcoming movie The Dictator, and other sources say the threat of booting him became more substantial on Wednesday.
“We haven’t banned him,” an Academy spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re just waiting to hear what he’s going to do.”

They should just ban him now, before he shows up and does something that makes the other murderous Arab dictators look bad. That could really hurt their feelings.