I know everybody thinks this Borat character is a hoot.

Everywhere you turn, people are walking around going, “Is naice,” in that faux Slavic accent of his.

It’s easy to see why.

At a time when everyone is afraid some Muslim lunatic is going to get hold of a nuke and blow us all up, it’s kind of cathartic to have this goofball Muslim character, with his bushy Saddam Hussein mustache, reduced to a bumbling idiot.

Kinda takes the edge off.

Presenting an honest and accurate picture of any ethnic minority has never been easy – certainly not in Hollywood movies.

But one thing is certain: Movies tend to reflect the culture of the time.

During World War II, Hollywood routinely portrayed Japanese people as savages, with fiendish sloped eyes and buck teeth. Twenty years later, Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of the angry Japanese landlord in the 1961 movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was equally offensive.

My point is that Borat strikes a nerve right now because he taps into something deep and dark in the nation’s psyche.

Dudes, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, Kazakhs are a Muslim people. Their president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is a Muslim. And like it or not, Borat is a Muslim stereotype: a bumbling ultraracist anti-Semite. Loathsome toward women. Clueless when it comes to the West. Even the signature gray suit he wears is purposefully left unwashed to make him smell more “foreign.”

Right now, that’s what sells in our country.

In a post-Sept. 11 world, where Muslims are routinely cast as archetypal boogeymen in the media and Hollywood, watching this village idiot run around naked, break other people’s expensive china and wash his face in a toilet is kind of funny.

Not surprising, really. Comedy is often hostile – you have to make fun of things to get people to laugh.

Picking Kazakhstan as his host country was no doubt a brilliant master stroke on the part of Borat’s creator, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Although Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country in the world, it’s one of those obscure geographic black holes in the minds of most Americans.

So when Borat portrays Kazakhs – and implicitly all Muslims – as retarded and backward, Cohen creates a false impression that nobody of real import is being offended.

The Cambridge-educated Cohen is himself Jewish and has often said that he uses the Borat character to expose anti-Semitism and racism.

But come on, folks. Who’s kidding whom?

What the Borat character says about Jews is hateful and repugnant. But personally, I think there’s an implicit understanding that anything this dopey foreigner says or does should not be taken too seriously because, frankly, Borat and “his kind” just don’t know how to behave.

Actually, I’m shocked more Muslims haven’t questioned what a devoutly Jewish man like Cohen is doing ridiculing a majority Muslim country in the first place.

To get an idea of how offensive or racist Cohen’s character really is, one need only grant Borat a different passport.

If perchance some other ethnic group were the target – one which isn’t as fashionable to hate – Borat’s shtick would be dismissed as nothing more than racist pandering.

Think about it.

It’s OK for Cohen to play a Muslim imbecile who hates Jews.

But what if Cohen instead put on blackface and played a bumbling African American guy who hates Jews?

Would people still find the material funny?