Janeane Garofalo

The gay blog On Top reported that “comedian” Janeane Garofalo is the latest in a string of celebrities and activists suggesting Michele Bachmann’s therapist husband Marcus must be gay, including Cher, Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld, and sex columnist/”It Gets Better” bully Dan Savage. Cher even said she wanted to strangle him.

This Marcus-is-gay line has also been a regular trope of liberal talk radio, from openly gay Stephanie Miller to Randi Rhodes to even Ron “Junior” Reagan, who knows something on this subject of aspersions from his ballet-dancing days.

Today's official announcement by Republican Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann that she is running for the GOP nomination for President could spawn a whole new round of frenzied attacks by the liberal media on the Tea Party favorite.

A review of the MRC's archives shows a particular disdain for Bachmann coming from the likes of MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who once accused her of being a "zombie," even going as far to ask her on live Election Night coverage if she "hypnotized?" 

In the midst of Republicans insisting on defunding NPR, the network thumbed its nose at the GOP again on Tuesday night's All Things Considered newscast by having a book review offered by hard-left "comedian" and failed radio host Janeane Garofalo. The book she reviewed was Tina Fey's new memoir, titled Bossypants. Garofalo spent most of the review in a rut of self-pity, but this political passage popped out:

Another area of interest to me was Tina's discussion of what happened when she impersonated Sarah Palin on "SNL" and became a target of ill-founded wrath. Regrettably, it's always been easy to marshal cultural hostility toward women, especially in politics, where double standards and misogyny tend to dominate the conversation. Those are my words, not Tina's.

Was Tina Fey the victim of cultural hostility toward women? Or was she the one dishing it out?

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, a UCLA graduate student has published a study debunking the myth that the Tea Party is racist.

On Monday, Gretchen Carlson invited the study's author on "Fox & Friends" to do what every news outlet ought to, namely, tell the truth about what the movement that is radically changing the political landscape is really all about (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Dallas Tea Party on Thursday accused MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, and Dylan Ratigan of racism.

Since January 20, 2009, all four of these men have criticized Barack Obama for one reason or another.

As MSNBC has been one of the strongest proponents of the despicable concept that anyone critical of this president must be a racist, DTP's founder Phillip Dennis believes the same should be true for that network's employees.

With this in mind, the DTP has created a marvelous video illustrating the point (video follows with commentary):

The Political Left is in a meltdown. There’s no way to sugarcoat the calamity. It is falling apart. It sees the tide has turned and a possible tsunami is building, ready to crest and explode in November, washing all their dreams away. How could this be happening to them?

Could it be that trillion dollar disaster otherwise know as the “stimulus,” that emergency measure needed to save the economy by creating millions of jobs except it’s accomplished absolutely nothing except putting our grandchildren yet another trillion dollars in debt? Or the auto company takeovers, something no one wanted and Congress never authorized as part of the TARP bailout fund? Or the appointment of one radical after another to nanny-state us all, including now the just recess-appointed Dr. Donald Berwick to oversee ObamaCare, a Marxist who proudly calls for the redistribution of wealth and who absolutely adores Britain’s onerous National Health Service, rationing and all? Or any one of a thousand other radical ventures proposed/discussed/enacted by this radical leftist regime?

Nah.

If Janeane Garofalo says something bad about the Obama administration, does that mean she's a racist redneck?

After all, she's been telling people almost since Inauguration Day that anyone that disagrees with this president does so because of the color of his skin.

So when she told the A.V. Club Friday, "There are so many things in the Obama administration to be sick over that certainly didn't change" and "I was surprised how disappointing the Obama administration has turned out to be," there has to be a racist element in play, right?

Not surprising to folks that have followed the career of this shameless left-wing activist, this wasn't the only glaring hypocrisy in this interview (h/t Big Hollywood): 

Sometime-comedian Janeane Garofalo never passes up an opportunity to slam conservatives or, apparently, Christianity. The Huffington Post gave her an opportunity June 24 to kill two birds with one stone.

In an interview promoting her upcoming special on a network called EPIX, Garofalo compared the most widely-read book of all time, the Bible, to a Bill O'Reilly autobiography and a children's book authored by former President Bush.

When asked by a Huffington Post reader which of those three publications she'd rather read, Garofalo said, "Actually that's like six and one half, that is six and one half right there." Presumably, she meant to use the popular idiom, "six of one, half a dozen of the other."

"That's just three works of fiction targeted to a child-like audience so any, all, any one, none," Garofalo said. "I don't know how to read either, so that's kind of a drag."

On Wednesday’s Joy Behar Show, HLN host Behar led a discussion of President Obama’s Address to the Nation with left-wing actress Janeane Garofalo and liberal commentator Ron Reagan, all of whom had some criticisms for President Obama regarding the BP oil spill and his speech on the subject. Garofalo started off complaining that "the prayer thing he did was pandering and anti-intellectual and just sort of a waste of time." After Behar pointed out that Obama had placed some of the blame on Mineral Management Service members who were still in place from the Bush administration, Garofalo did not give Obama a pass: "Right, so why did he not take care of that when he got into office?"

Reagan complained that his speech was "too little too late," and that "he`s a corporatist like all our other Presidents have been for a long, long time. That`s what`s being revealed here. Barack Obama is just as much a corporatist as George H.W. – or George W. Bush was."

While Behar was generally more inclined to defend Obama, at one point even she asserted that President Obama’s failure to meet with the head of BP was "so Bush, Bush-like. It`s shocking that he`s behaving this way," prompting Garofalo to lament: "I don`t know who's giving him the worst advice in the world. I don`t know, I don`t know why this presidency has been as disappointing as it has been. I really feel like he`s being advised terribly."

It's an archaic way of thinking - unless it's imposed upon conservatives, then it's OK. It's this notion that commentators that are right-of-center should know their place - that place being only in the realms of talk radio or on the Fox News Channel. Otherwise, it is unacceptable.

Now Politico has joined the fray and is taking news tips from left-wing storefronts that have staked out RedState.com founder Erick Erickson's Macon, Ga. radio show on Newstalk 940 WMAC, to capture any sort of gotcha moment to embarrass Erickson. And all of this seems to have been spurred on by CNN's announcement last month that Erickson would be a network contributor.

At issue is Erickson's claim he would pull a shotgun on an American Community Survey (ACS) worker, an organization that is part of the U.S. Census Bureau, if he attempted to approach his home. However, Erickson's statement has been framed by his critics that he is attempting to prevent the Census Bureau from fulfilling a constitutional requirement, and that has been deemed "threatening" by Andy Barr of Politico in an April 2 post.

On Wednesday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann used his regular "Quick Comment" segment to lecture Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio for recently remarking that people like Olbermann "hate America" and should be traded to other countries in exchange for immigrants who love America. As the MSNBC host referred to his own great grandparents who immigrated to America "for its opportunity and its freedom," Olbermann charged that they had come to this country to escape people like Rubio: "Mr. Rubio, I am the great grandson of immigrants, as you are the son of immigrants, who came to this country for its opportunity and its freedom. And I know one thing for sure: my ancestors and yours were trying to get away from people like you."

Notably, just over a year ago on the March 24, 2009, Countdown show, Olbermann seemed to express a negative view of American "values" generally when he mocked the name of Gary Bauer's American Values organization as sounding like a "discount septic tank operation." Olbermann: "Gary Bauer, former presidential candidate, former Reagan domestic policy adviser and now president of American Values which, despite the name, is not a discount septic tank operation, writing at Politico a mere two months after the last of dozens of conflicting Pentagon reports suggested with almost no verification that 61 former Gitmo detainees had been identified as returning to terrorism."

Greg Gutfeld and the "Red Eye" gang struck back at comediennes Janeane Garofalo and Rosie O'Donnell Wednesday for their attack on Fox News hosts last week. 

As NewsBusters reported, the pair were on O'Donnell's radio show last Tuesday bashing Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Sustern, and Brit Hume just to name a few.

With this in mind, Gutfeld and Company decided to use Robot Theater to demonstrate what Garofalo and O'Donnell must have discussed that evening after the interview.

Making it even more delicious, the Robots shared their infatuation with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

Actress and activist Janeane Garofalo had more disgusting things to say about people whose views she doesn't agree with during her radio interview with comedian Rosie O'Donnell.

On top of what NewsBusters already reported, Garofalo once again went into a rant about conservatives, this time claiming, "The Republican Party has now morphed into a National Front," the all-white British Party that is often compared to neo-Nazis.

Beyond this, Garofalo repeated her despicable assertion, "The Teabaggers, that is racism, pure and simple."

Further illustrating her questionable grasp on reality, Garofalo accused the GOP of stealing the 2000 AND 2004 presidential elections (video embedded below the fold with transcribed highlights, h/t Radio Equalizer via Story Balloon):

Sean Hannity Wednesday took on the recent attacks against conservatives made by liberal entertainers Janeane Garofalo, Bill Maher, and Rosie O'Donnell as well as the hit cartoon series "Family Guy."

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, Garofalo was on O'Donnell's radio show that day spouting disgusting invective aimed at a littany of conservatives including Hannity himself.

That evening, Maher was on "Larry King Live" calling Americans "not bright enough to really understand the issues." On Sunday, Fox's "Family Guy" attacked former Alaska governor Sarah Palin with a Down Syndrome joke.

With this in mind, Hannity brought conservative author Michelle Malkin on his Fox News program Wednesday to discuss unhinged liberals gone wild.

Possibly the best comment of the segment was when Malkin said of Garofalo and O'Donnell, "They should not be mixed together because what you get in the end is this bubbling cauldron of toxicity" (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

My first instinct when one of my tipsters sent me a link containing a discussion between the astonishingly vile Janeane Garofalo and Rosie O'Donnell on the latter's radio program was to delete the e-mail message and pretend I had never received it.

I had just eaten lunch, and really didn't want to upset my stomach so early in the day, especially given how gorgeous the weather is here in Northern California following so many straight weeks of rain.

But curiosity finally got the best of me, and what I discovered was worse than I could possibly imagine.

From O'Donnell calling Rush Limbaugh a junkie to Garofalo claiming that everyone on Fox News is a liar, I really wish I had gone with my first instinct and ignored this travesty (video embedded below the fold with extremely rough partial transcript as a result of the shooting pains caused by the content, h/t Story Balloon):

Bad content? Bad business model?  No, those reasons aren't why Air America is no longer with us. Air America, a radio network advertised as the next talk radio juggernaut in 2004, was supposed to revolutionize the format and provide a "counterweight" for those left-of-center politically.

But there's another reason according to HLN host and "The View" panelist Joy Behar. In the usual fashion of citing no statistics and making sweeping generalizations, Behar blamed the collapse of liberal talk radio outlet Air America on a gender gap in listeners on her Jan. 25 HLN broadcast.

"Ok, but can I say that men listen to talk radio more than women and men are more conservative, generally speaking," Behar said, proposing a reason for Air America's bankruptcy.

If you have been a regular viewer of CNN Headline News' "The Joy Behar Show," you've probably seen the nightly cheap shots at conservatives, usually in the form of jabs at Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.

But on Behar's Oct. 20 program, the HLN host used a panel discussion with liberal flamethrower/comedian Janeane Garofalo and S.E. Cupp, conservative author of "Why You're Wrong About the Right" to attack former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

"But [Palin's] favorability, popularity rates are going down," Behar said. "And is it possible her 15 minutes are up?"

Comedian and kooky leftist Janeane Garofalo is at it again, smearing conservative activists as "white power" racists. Garofalo made her incendiary comments on the October 2 edition of Bill Maher's "Real Time" program on HBO.

Sorry, Janeane, the "real reason that so few people are willing to talk about racism is because, quite frankly, few people are as crazy as Janeane Garofalo is," Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell told viewers the next morning on Saturday's "Fox & Friends." [MP3 audio available here]

Bozell noted that Garofalo conveniently forgets that President Obama began office in January with a stunning 83 percent approval rating, before citing more evidence of Garofalo's wackiness:

“Actress/activist” Janeane Garofalo used another media appearance to smear anti-Obama protesters as racists, this time, Friday night on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, insisting “it's obvious to anybody who has eyes in this country that tea-baggers, the 9-12ers” are “clearly white power movements” led “by the Glenn Becks, the Michelle Bachmans, the Rush Limbaughs.”

She fretted that “so few people are willing to say that yes it is racism, straight up racism,” before confusing which party controlled segregationist southern states: “The Republican Party has been willing to carry water for racists in this country since about the 1950s.” Garofalo proceeded to repeat a charge she's made often: “Fox News is happy to feed into this; AM radio is happy to feed into this,” including “this tacit nudging towards violence.” [Audio: MP3 clip]

You probably already knew Jeanane Garofalo was no fan of conservatives, Republicans or just about anything that could be described as right of center. But the former Air America host and MSNBC regular really has a low regard for conservative activists.

In an appearance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 21, Garofalo ripped into tea party protesters, or what some of the wizards of smart on the left have deemed "tea baggers" calling them "functionally retarded adults" and "racists."

"Do you remember tea baggers?" Garofalo said. "It was just so much easier when we could just call them racists. I just don't know why we can't call them racists, or functionally retarded adults."

After bombing on stage at England's Latitude festival a few weeks ago, Janeane Garofalo apparently decided to go back to what she's best at: vulgarly attacking faceless Americans whose political opinions she disagrees with.

Having called the April 15 Tea Party goers "a bunch of teabagging rednecks" on MSNBC's "Countdown," Garofalo's encore was to tell a British newspaper that "These people are called 'racially sensitive', what they should be called is racist, backward motherf**kers."  

As reported by Britain's Guardian Saturday (obvious vulgarity warning):

On Monday’s Hannity show on FNC, actor Jon Voight accused the press of "protecting" and "covering for" President Obama by not giving enough coverage to dissatisfaction with the President’s economic policies, including the anti-tax TEA party protests:

But the press, the press brought him in, and now they want to make sure that nobody topples the throne, it seems. So they don't report anything that will interfere with his policies. But when the news is biased, it can, you know, it can control the people in a dangerous way. We see what's going on in Venezuela, and we're shocked. We're shocked to see Hugo Chavez closing down the, the opposition media. We're shocked when we see what's happening to the truth in Iran. But this same thing is happening in our country right now. The Obama regime is controlling the press. They protect him, they cover for him, and they don't want the truth to come out that there is this dissatisfaction, that people are waking up, and it's being expressed in these TEA parties.

He also charged that Obama had been dishonest in promising to protect Israel, and that the President had a "cunning ability" to push his policies through Congress without proper debate:

UPDATE AT END OF POST: More tweets about Garofalo's meltdown at Latitude festival.

I've often wondered what the color of the sky is in Janeane Garofalo's world, and after hearing her interview on BBC Radio Saturday, I'm convinced this woman lives on another planet.

After all, in her view: "[T]he media in the States is much more to the right. I mean there is almost no liberal outlet for news commentary or editorializing."

This coming from a woman who used to host a program on the far-left-leaning Air America Radio, and is a frequent guest on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" as well as Bill Maher's "Real Time."

Such idiocy made it all the more fitting that after she finished her chat with the BBC's Clive Anderson, Garofalo ended up cutting her comedy routine at the Latitude festival short due to the audience's seeming disinterest in her views.

But before we get there, here's a partial transcript of her fact-challenged, Bush-bashing interview (audio available here, relevant section at 3:00, h/t NBer DB): 

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:

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):

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):

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:

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:

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):