In honor of today's debut of Air America Radio (in all of its many markets ), the liberal answer to the right wing "hate" that fills the airwaves, we present one of the stars of this budding progressive network, Janeane Garofalo, spouting off on a variety of subjects in her own words. A few weeks ago on the Northern Alliance Radio Show, I brought up a few of these pearls, but limited airtime and FCC restrictions prevented me from getting to most of them. Enjoy.
(Sources at the end)
On the media:
The myth perpetuated by the mainstream media was that the country was 100% behind the Bush administration – no matter what. 1
At a time as important as this, they have absolutely rolled over to the conservative hawkish agenda. 4
Unfortunately, a lot of people are under the impression that they’re getting news from FOX. In order to get news, you really have to do a lot of legwork. You have to listen to the radio, go on the Internet, watch PBS, dip into CNN and read a couple of papers. They make you really have to work for it to learn anything about your country. You’ll probably learn the most about your country by watching international news. 1
Unexamined patriotism in the wrong hands is like a loaded gun. It’s incredibly dangerous and a form of narcissism that gets people into trouble. Fox feeds narcissism in a strange way. 5
It degrades culture because then, you’ll see a poll, “Sixty percent of Americans think that George Bush is doing a great job.” Why is that? Because they’re misinformed. It’s not because he’s doing a great job. It’s because they’re getting spin. Most people don’t know what’s going on. They may think he’s doing a good job, and what that means is A.) they’re not paying attention or B.) they only get their news from corporate establishment news sources, which means they have no idea. 5
That’s what his version of what America is – God Bless America only, and let’s assault people who don’t agree. That’s the kind of America that Sean Hannity wants to live in and cultivates on FOX. That is not reflective of mainstream. 1
That brings us to some of the rightwing pundits who dominate the radio, like Mike Savage, or some of the commentators at Fox--the Ann Coulters, what have you. I think what they do is they turn their own personal issues--whether they be racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, or imperialistic--and they wrap them in the flag and hide them behind Jesus. 4
That’s great, and what has also been a really, really wonderful trick also perpetrated by people like Ann coulter, FOX News, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved- they pretend that actors are the evil within our borders; that actors are this subversive, liberal-communist group that are going to somehow brainwash your children. This is a great tactic that they use, because they all, essentially, carry water for the right. They are great at manufacturing straw men, manufacturing the false opposition, because it’s easy to foist that on an unsophisticated population that goes, “Oh yeah, it’s Barbra Streisand, not Enron!” (laughs)
Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter really, really work very hard in that. I call it ‘Operation Dumb-Ass’ (laughs) which is, this huge subterfuge-kind of rightwing movement to distract the population and have them look at Hollywood as if it’s a monolithic problem to their family, when really, what’s bad for families is militarization, globalization, and deficits. All those things are bad for your family. Barbra Streisand is not bad for your family. 1
Speaking about Laura Ingraham:
She’s one of those girls that finds Joe McCarthy sexually appealing. She’s in that crew, who identifies as a conservative, but is not. What she is, like Hannity and all those people, is cruel and has issues with ‘the other’ in our culture. She doesn’t like people that are not like her. So she hides behind being a conservative, which isn’t really true. She’s just sort of emotionally immature and unable to be tolerant of diversity. That’s the problem with a lot of movement conservatives. They are pretending that it’s political, but it really isn’t. It’s really just an emotional need to keep the playing field tilted. 1
About Dennis Miller:
Instead of taking an anger management course, or instead of working out in therapy your inner demons and your rage issues, it’s really much easier to be an in-your-face prick and pretend you’re being patriotic. And I think that’s worked out really well for Dennis. 1
On history:
Every great reform we have in this country from ending slavery to seatbelts is a liberal reform. 1
On conservatives:
They’re also fine with hiding behind Jesus. They love to hide their cruelty, their homophobia, and their closet racism. They wrap it in the flag and hide it behind Jesus. It’s very convenient and they hope that nobody notices. 1
They are absolutely thrilled that they can take their misguided anger, and their xenophobia, and their aggressiveness, and their belligerence, and hide behind the flag and Jesus, that is fantastic. 3
Like I said, a lot of people who like to wrap themselves in the flag, hide behind Jesus, and be aggressive -- some of those people are not intellectual powerhouses. 3
They’re taking paranoia and distaste- and I’m sure a healthy dose of the self-loathing in there, too, because you really can’t be that cruel on a daily basis and not dislike yourself or be unhappy. They’re taking all these emotional shortcomings, and playing it politics. It’s really effective, because it makes for good TV and it finds its audience in the nation. It’s very easy to build an Archie Bunker nation. It’s not easy to build a Paul Wellstone nation. That’s why FOX’s ratings are high. 1
It’s so easy to be a Bush-Coulter fan. What that means is that you do not have to care about other people. You can be angry all the time so it really, really lets you off the hook. Instead of participating meaningfully in your community, or your own life, for that matter, you can be a dittohead or buy a Bush doll or watch O’Reilly and write hate mail to people. 1
They don’t want diversity, many messages, or many voices. That’s part of the reason some people gravitate towards the right. They like authoritarian systems where the marching orders are given and people follow them lockstep. That’s the reason they sort of go rightward. The reason other people go leftward is because they’re more interested in diversity. There’s much more room for alternative opinions. 1
...the dumb and the mean love patriotism....What you have now is people that are closet racists, misogynists, homophobes and people who love tilted playing field and the politics of exclusion identifying as conservative. 2
Unfortunately though, in this country, as in many countries, there's always going to be groups of individuals who want war anyway. They like to be aggressive. They like to have an us-and-them attitude. They like to be isolationists. They like to be somewhat exclusionary and racist in their thinking anyway. If they have the opportunity to wrap it in a flag, so much the better -- you know what I'm saying? 3
In the ranks of some of these very conservative or right-wing groups, not everybody's a bad person or anti-intellectual -- but what those kind of groups cater toward is people with sociopathic tendencies. There are things that people like Ann Coulter say, and things that people like Rush Limbaugh say, and Mike Savage, that are straight-up sociopathic, straight-up racist, straight-up sexist. And all of this stuff gets wrapped in the flag. 3
It is shocking that some people's lives are enriched by this nonsense--these boycotts and e-mails. They are proving themselves to be fundamentally anti-American and anti-democratic. They are against the First Amendment, so what are they defending? Unless they are trying to build a fascist Administration, unless they are trying to bring the American people to a point that we exist under a totalitarian regime. 4
It’s a psychological need that leads to what you’re talking about, willful ignorance, a placing of one’s head in the sand because you can’t emotionally handle the idea of being so poorly led as a country by a President (President Bush), who is clearly one of the worst presidents historically we’ve ever had. There’s nothing wrong in saying that. 5
Excuse me while I step out for a moment to wrap myself in the flag, hide behind Jesus, and oppress some minorities. At least she's consistent.
On the war in Iraq:
It was an attempt at a corporate takeover. This was about oil. It wasn't about human rights. It's not about human rights. 2
On the Bush Administration:
The Bush administration wants to expand its powers of surveillance over your life, while simultaneously rolling back the Freedom of Information Act. Team Bush is more radically corrupt than Richard Nixon ever tried to be. 2
It is in fact a conspiracy of the 43rd Reich. 2
Despair will not discriminate. Once this shit hits the fan, and as the economy goes further into the toilet and is further degraded, as social programs in this country are slashed and burned to funnel money to the Pentagon, as more people that are mentally ill get thrown off their medication plans, and more children are left behind in the public school education system, who cares? 3
"There's nothing you could point to in the Bush Administration with pride," she says. "Nothing. There is no way any rational, reasonable person can say that the Bush Administration has been good for America." 4
This will potentially be one of the worst chapters in American history that will go on for twenty or thirty years, until democracy, in some fashion, is established. 4
There's been such an assault on democracy here, and the mainstream media is complicit in it. We are living in neo-McCarthy, post-democratic times. Democracy is being criminalized. Democracy is being ignored. 4
If you do your homework and educate yourself about American domestic and foreign policy through the years, you’ll see that President Bush is probably one of the worst in the last two hundred-some-odd years of this country. 5
On Dissent:
So to say that just because your occupation is not within the Beltway you have no First Amendment rights is absurd. 3
And then these same people have a problem with political correctness. They can't stand political correctness, which, in my mind, just means civility, you know. 3
A lot of people were unhappy with the bellicose nationalism, the partisan psuedo-patriotism, and just the general bullying tone that was coming out of FOX News, MSNBC, right-wing radio, and the White House. 1
I'm so public about this because I've been asked to do so and because I painfully felt that the anti-war movement was being ignored. So it was a combination of those two things. If I thought the anti-war movement was getting proper coverage in the mainstream media, I would have said no. You don't need actors to make this a mockery. 4
I never imagined that I would never care about dumb things anymore. I never imagined I'd be a person who could transcend that kind of nonsense. But beyond that, I never imagined I would be penalized for speaking out in favor of social justice. I never thought that anyone who spoke out for peace, and diplomacy, and social justice would be pilloried. 4
On Herself:
I'm frequently depressed, just have a general malaise. And I don't mean a malaise of indifference, I mean a malaise of sadness and fear. I've always been alarmed by some of the things that the mainstream media does and by what the government does, no matter who's in office, but the broken heart is new. 5
Now that should make for some entertaining radio.
What could have brought Janeane to such dire straits? Now I'm not a psychologist, but I gotta think this tale from her past might provide a hint to her current mania:
I'm somebody where if I walked into a bar you wouldn't notice me, but at least a circle of frat guys isn't going to make fun of me like they did in college.
I was huge -- I weighed 160 pounds. Every Friday and Saturday night, I would walk on eggshells back to my dorm, like, "Please don't let there be a group of guys, please, please." Of course they made fun of me. Guys in a group? Come on. The worst. 6
Sources
1. Democratic Underground Forums - My interview with Janeane Garofalo
2. Battle Against Terrorism a Failure, Leads to “Chaos and Blood” --8/21/2003-- Media Research Center
3. Janeane Garofalo, Concerned American Citizen and Patriot - A BuzzFlash Interview
4. Janeane Garofalo Interview | Elizabeth DiNovella | May 2003 Issue
5. PRESS RELEASE: Janeane Garofalo speaks out about FOX NEWS
6. Salon interview Janeane Garofalo
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