Janeane Garofalo

Black Republican Takes on Obama and Janeane Garofalo
By Noel Sheppard | May 23, 2009 | 11:37 AM EDT

For many years a common media meme has been that black people have to be Democrats and that African-Americans whose political views are even slightly right of center must either be addle-minded or crazy.

Janeane Garofalo in her disgusting interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last month said anybody at April's Tea Parties that wasn't white had to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. 

On Friday, Barbara Howard, a black, Republican media and government relations consultant from Florida, took on this absurd stereotype -- "I dare say that Miss Garofalo knows little or nothing about black folk and definitely not black Republicans" -- while claiming President Obama "thinks he knows more than everybody, including all 43 presidents before him."

In a South Florida Times op-ed marvelously titled "The Politics of Blackness: A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing," Howard discussed how Obama's healthcare proposal would have negatively impacted her recent stay in the hospital:

Janeane Garofalo Stands By Her Tea Partiers Are Racists Claim
By Noel Sheppard | May 14, 2009 | 4:47 PM EDT

Comedienne and liberal activist Janeane Garofalo caused quite a stir last month when she called Tea Party goers "a bunch of teabagging rednecks," adding "this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up."

On May 8, Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins happened upon Garofalo at a Starbucks in Boston, and asked, "What do you think of calling just honest protesters racists?"

Garofalo wasn't backing down or apologizing: "Well, because they're not just honest protesters. They were indeed motivated a lot by racism."

What follows is a full transcript of Jenkins' appearance on Fox News's "Hannity" Monday wherein much of his interview with Garofalo was aired (video embedded below the fold, complete, unedited interview video at end of post):

GE Shareholders Meeting: 'The Crowd Was Very Upset With MSNBC'
By Noel Sheppard | April 22, 2009 | 8:05 PM EDT

UPDATE: Audio of crowd booing GE CEO available here.

General Electric held its annual shareholders meeting Wednesday, and attendees apparently were very upset with the increasing leftward tilt of MSNBC.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, during the question and answer phase of the meeting, shareholders repeatedly brought up the company's far-left leaning network, and often had their microphones turned off as a result.

Here are highlights from the THR report (link loading slowly due to appearance at the Drudge Report):

Summary of the April 15 TEA Parties Media Coverage
By Seton Motley | April 22, 2009 | 4:20 PM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Lamestream Media
The media coverage of the more than 800 Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party protests that took place in all fifty states on April 15 ranged from disdainful dismissal of their nature, significance and import, to outright hostility towards the events and individual participants, to sexual innuendo-based full-on ridicule.

In this summary, we focused on the three major networks - NBC, ABC and CBS, the two left-of-center cable news networks - CNN and MSNBC and the three major "national" newspapers - the USA Today, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

While not an exhaustively comprehensive oeuvre of TEA Party bias, it contains many, many examples which serve to illustrate the broader antipathetic themes.

To wit:

MRC/NB's Bozell Reacts to Garofalo Calling Tea Party-goers 'Tea-bagging Rednecks'
By NB Staff | April 20, 2009 | 12:58 PM EDT

Janeane Garofalo embodies "the dark, the very ugly underbelly of the American Left today" which "is on display for anyone to see," Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell told viewers of Sunday, April 19 edition of "Fox & Friends Weekend." [audio available here]

"This is about hating a black man. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks," the liberal comedian and actress told Keith Olbermann on his Thursday, April 16 edition of "Countdown."

"What gets me [is that] no one on the Left has denounced this woman. No one denounces these people when they go off the deep end like this. This is the dark, ugly underside of the Left today," Bozell added.

The segment -- which aired at 9:15 a.m. EDT -- began with co-host Alisyn Camerota noting the folly of competitor networks dismissively scoffing the massive protests:

Hypocritical Janeane Garofalo Contradicts Herself on Dissent and Lies About Rush Limbaugh Visit
By P.J. Gladnick | April 19, 2009 | 3:50 PM EDT
There is a great expository video called "Janeane Garofalo on Dissent: Then & Now" put together by therightscoop. It shows Garofalo on Countdown with Keith Olbermann in both 2003 and 2009 completely contradicting herself on the subject of dissent. First see what Janeane Garofalo in 2009 has to say about the tea party protests:

Let's be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don't know their history at all. It's about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up...

And now we have the 2003 Janeane Garofalo on the subject of dissent (update at end of post includes partial transcript and context of her remarks):

Lou Dobbs Calls Janeane Garofalo a Hateful Appalling Human Being
By Noel Sheppard | April 18, 2009 | 11:32 AM EDT

Count CNN's Lou Dobbs amongst the likely millions of Americans disgusted by Janeane Garofalo's vitriolic attacks Thursday when she claimed the previous day's Tea Parties "were about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks." 

On his radio program Friday, Dobbs took issue with the actress, comedian, and activist, referring to her as a "nasty piece of business," " a one woman, you know, hate event," and "an appalling human being."

Dobbs also pointed fingers at the network responsible for this disgraceful broadcast, MSNBC, for thinking "their responsibility as a media is to be a conduit for the Obama administration. They think they are the bastion of the, the 21st century socialistic thought. They're as left-wing as it can get, and they apparently are hell-bound to be the conduit for the Obama administration, the venue for left-wing politics and zaniness in this country."

The audio of Dobbs' marvelous monologue is available here courtesy our friend Johnny Dollar, with a transcript below the fold (h/t Jeff Poor):

Video: Garofalo's Vitriol About Racist Tea Party Participants; Fox News Is for Dummies
By Brent Baker | April 18, 2009 | 10:39 AM EDT
Left-wing activist/actress Janeane Garofalo, now starring on Fox's '24', went on a wild rant Thursday night, on MSNBC's Countdown, impugning those who attended the Wednesday tea parties as racists and denigrating the brain power of anyone who watches the Fox News Channel. (In his Thursday night post, “Garofalo: Tea Party Goers Are Racists Who Hate Black President,” Noel Sheppard provided an embedded video of the entire segment with Keith Olbermann as well as a full transcript.)

Here, however, is an edited video (matching MP3 audio), just over two-minutes in length, of her most-outrageous smears uttered on the April 16 program.

“This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism, straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks. And there is no way around that,” she scurrilously charged. After comparing conservatives to “white power activists,” she continued: “This is about racism. It could be any issue, any port in a storm. These guys hate that a black guy is in the White House.”
Garofalo: Tea Party Goers Are Racists Who Hate Black President
By Noel Sheppard | April 16, 2009 | 11:56 PM EDT

During last year's election campaign, liberal media members treated Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin with a hatred most Americans had never witnessed from the press.

On Thursday's "Countdown," MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and his guest Janeane Garofalo defamed fellow citizens who attended the prior day's Tea Parties with the same vitriolic contempt.

Garofalo actually called Party-goers "a bunch of teabagging rednecks," adding "this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up." 

But that's just the beginning, for what Olbermann and Garofalo engaged in Thursday evening is amongst the most vile, hate-filled attacks on average American citizens ever conveyed on national television by so-called journalists. Please brace yourself (video embedded below the fold with transcript corrected from closed-captioning, h/t NBer Jeff Fuller):

On MSNBC Garofalo Paints Conservatives as Angry Racists Who Inspire Murder
By Brad Wilmouth | March 17, 2009 | 7:12 PM EDT

On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann hosted left-wing actress and comedian Janeane Garofalo to discuss FNC analyst Bernard Goldberg’s recent enumeration of the "five worst offenders" of what Bill O’Reilly called the "far-left smear machine,"and Garofalo took the opportunity to paint conservatives as angry racists who inspire violence from some of their non-intellectual followers. Garofalo: "The right wing has a way of always having an enemy, whether it be immigrants or Arabs or brown-skinned people, black-skinned people, homosexuals, women. They all, kind of, rally around an enemy, an other, that they can get mad at. And death does occur."

After accusing conservative activist Grover Norquist of "handing out talking points" to a "right-wing machine," and after mentioning former Vice President Cheney’s recent contention that President Obama’s policies would endanger the nation’s homeland security, Garofalo called the "personality type" that she claimed motivates some non-intellectual conservatives a "scourge" and an "unfortunate part of our society." Garofalo: "A lot of the people in the right-wing base are not the most intellectual people in the world, not the most savvy people in the world, and they are definitely quick to anger, and quick to blame other people. ... it's a very sad, sad thing, and it's part of the human nature of a personality type that tends to identify as Republican or conservative. And it's an unfortunate part of our society. It's a scourge on our society." Olbermann concurred: "It is, indeed."

Olbermann & Garofalo See ‘Self-Loathing’ ‘Black Guy’ Michael Steele, Limbaugh Compared to Hitler
By Brad Wilmouth | February 27, 2009 | 12:57 AM EST

On Thursday’s Countdown show, left-wing actress and comedienne Janeane Garofalo appeared to talk about a recent poll finding that Rush Limbaugh is substantially less popular with women than with men. Evoking laughter from host Keith Olbermann, Garofalo remarked that "the type of female that does like Rush is the same type of woman that falls in love with prisoners." After mentioning serial killers Richard Ramirez and Charles Manson, she then compared women who like Limbaugh to Adolf Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun: "Eva Braun, Hitler’s girlfriend. That is exactly the type of woman that responds really well to Rush." (Video of the entire segment can be found here.)

After mentioning that former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan used to date Limbaugh, Garofalo cracked that Kagan has Stockholm Syndrome, which she also attributed to RNC Chairman Michael Steele, with Olbermann agreeing that Steele suffers from "self-loathing":

JANEANE GAROFALO: She dated him, so either she suffers from Stockholm Syndrome – a lot like Michael Steele, who’s the black guy in the Republican party who suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, which means you try and curry favor with the oppressor.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Yes, you talk about self-loathing.

GAROFALO: Yeah, and there’s, any female or person of color in the Republican party is struggling with Stockholm Syndrome.

Below is a transcript of relevant comments from the Thursday, February 26, Countdown show on MSNBC:

Janeane Garofalo Says GOPers Are A**holes and Sarah Palin Is 'Small-minded''
By Lynn Davidson | February 13, 2009 | 4:16 AM EST

Are you a conservative? Then you're a d***, and there's something wrong with your brain. At least that's what "24" actress and comedienne Janeane Garofalo believes.

According to the former Air America radio host, a conservative starts out an “a**hole,” and the politics come later. She asserted, “The reason a person is a conservative republican (sic) is because something is wrong with them...It really is neuroscience.”

In this February 12 interview with the environmentalist celebrity blog Ecorazzi, Garofalo also claimed the “irrational” emotion center of the brain, the limbic system, is what creates conservatives (text reformatted, profanity edited, all bold mine):

The reason a person is a conservative republican is because something is wrong with them. Again, that’s science – that’s neuroscience. You cannot be well adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a republican. It’s counter-intuitive. And they revel in their anti-intellectualism. They revel in their cruelty.