Janeane Garofalo refuses to go away. It really doesn’t matter how many times she’s given the Magnum PI treatment, because liberal media outlets will keep anyone with a modicum of “celebrity” status on career life support if they’re willing to spew partisan spittle on cue:
AVC Interviewer: Do you feel like you’ve become better known for the non-funny things you say about politics than for your comedy?
Garafalo: I don’t know. I don’t know how well known, really, I am at all at this point. And I’m not saying that as a “poor me” thing. I’m just saying, you know, I have no web presence, and I don’t know that there’s many people who really do know me that much anymore…
Janeane is partially right. Most people today don’t really know
her for any sort of cinematic or comedic flashes of brilliance, but for her Pavlovian partisan yip yaps at the behest of producers and editors hoping to snag the lowest common denominator of liberal true believers. Case in point:
AVC Interviewer: …I suppose the presence of minorities in [Tea Party] videos and such is their way of showing that they aren’t racist.
Garofalo: And I would say those people suffer from Stockholm syndrome.
In Garafalo’s mind, people who disagree with her don’t do so because they have legitimate public policy alternatives that might be more beneficial to the country’s long term economic health—they have Stockholm Syndrome! And in Garafalo’s mind, if it gets under your skin listening to someone with no discernible qualifications to offer public policy pronouncements (other than a bottomless quiver of flimsy intellectual arrows), it’s because you’re a misogynist:
Garofalo: The teabagger thing and the right-wing thing—they pick easy targets, and a female in the entertainment industry is low-hanging fruit. It’s very easy to mock and marginalize people in general who are in the entertainment industry, for some reason. But then definitely there’s the double standard and the misogyny that goes through it as well. They’ve got no problem with Will Ferrell or Alec Baldwin or Viggo Mortensen, but they tend to take issue when a female says something.
Actually, Janeane, I’ve mentioned the Funny or Die Liberalism of Will Ferrell before, but he gets less attention because he’s not on Keith Olbermann’s rolodex of reliable liberal guest appearances. And perhaps that’s because, unlike you, he still has the ability to make people laugh:
AVC Interviewer: How do you deal with situations like what happened at last year’s Latitude Festival while staying sober? [After a poor reception from the audience, Garofalo left the stage 10 minutes into her set. —ed.]
Garafolo: It’s terrible! It’s honestly mortifying. It’s just personal failure. I’ve no one but myself to blame. There is no way around that. I failed, and it wouldn’t have helped to be drinking. Or maybe it actually would have, if I drank beforehand. I might have been like, “Oh, I can do this.” I might have had false confidence…And I am very sorry about it, and I wish that did not happen. I wish that I had had the confidence to do it, and been more mature, and powered through my sense of dread.
I find it interesting that the same person who bailed ten minutes into her failing gig also applied that same mindset to the Iraq War not too long ago…and yet, she’s still perfectly at ease referring to herself as a “statesman”:
AVC Interviewer: There’ s a whole younger generation now that’s been raised on and inspired by your comedy. Do you get that sense that you’ve become an elder statesman? Do you recognize your own impact?
Garafalo: I definitely get the sense that I’m an elder statesman, but I don’t know if there’s an impact—and I’m not saying that in a naïve way. I don’t know. I think anybody who’s been doing it for 25 years is going to be considered an elder statesman. But I don’t know if I’ve impacted anyone.
The last time I checked, most people who are elevated to the level of a “statesman” are also recognized as having some sort of influence over how events unfolded during their tenure. One might say that in this instance Janeane was simply being humble, but I think deep down she knows that she’s a contributor to chattering class white noise and little else. She wants to be considered a statesman of…something…in some field, but the same person who burst on the scene with Ben Stiller has more in common in terms of career-trajectory with liberal guys like Andy Dick. And what do liberal artists turn to when their career heads south? Political pot shots at conservatives. There’s always an opportunity to make waves as long as the ladies of The View and liberal media outlets exist. They’ll give anyone a shot at resuscitating their career if they’ll liken conservatives to dim-witted, racist, homophobic, bigoted boobs. The problems liberals are facing now are little things like the internet, talk radio, social media platforms, and emerging technologies that allow the rest of us to point out how bitter, sad, angry and (most importantly) wrong people like Janeane are.
Janeane Garafalo: a “statesman” in the vein of Winston Churchill…if Winston Churchill was a whiner and a quitter.
Winston Churchill: “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
Garafalo: “…Teabaggers.”
You rock, Janeane!
Douglas Ernst Blog 