by Brent Baker
“I don't know that I would need to be famous as a Middle East policy expert to see that unilateral imperialism is bad policy,” comedian/actress Janeane Garofalo declared in making a ridiculously over-hyped charge on CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday before complaining about how the news media are not “taking me too seriously.” She contended: “I think they use actors to marginalize the anti-war movement.”
She complained to Howard Kurtz on the January 26 CNN show that “historically the mainstream media has never been particularly friendly to any socially progressive ideas” and then blamed the White House and the media for her ignorance:
“If I am uninformed, which I'd like to think I work very hard not to be, uninformed, it is the fault of the White House and the mainstream media. We don't get enough information. We don't get enough news with our news. And how can we function as a democracy without information? We are given disinformation and White House propaganda all the time. We have no history to our news, no context to our news, no global perspective. We don't see people outside our borders as humans. And if I am uninformed, which I'd like to think I work very hard not to be, uninformed, it is the fault of the White House and the mainstream media.”
Uninformed or refusing to accept the information? She complained: “You have anchors saying all the time, 'Well, we know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.’ No, we don't. We do not. We do not know that.”
She clearly doesn't watch television network news. How else to explain her take on how the networks portrayed the recent anti-war march: “They tend to marginalize it by only interviewing the guy dressed as a carrot on stilts or Wavy Gravy. You know what I mean? Like some guy with no teeth and a tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt, because they want to marginalize it.”
In fact, as anyone who actually watched or read the coverage would know, the networks and major newspapers avoided the extremist organizers and attendees and focused nearly exclusively on those attendees who looked like mainstream America.
Refer back to these Media Research Center Cyberalert reports:
• “Peace march” whitewash. Ignoring the radical agenda of organizers, the networks painted attendees as sympathetically as possible, stressing how they were made up of “grandparents,” “honor students,” “soccer moms” and “Republicans.” CNN highlighted an elderly Nazi survivor who wants to “stop more suffering.” ABC’s description: “Black and white, Democrat and Republican, young and old.” MSNBC: “A growing number of people are speaking out against a war with Iraq: Students, grandparents, businessmen…”
• Add CBS to the list of networks whitewashing Saturday's “peace” marches by ignoring the far-left agenda of those behind the protests and focusing on how marchers represented a cross-section of America. “Young, old, veterans and veteran activists united in the effort to stop the war before it starts,” trumpeted CBS's Joie Chen. From San Francisco, John Blackstone highlighted a young boy who came with his father as Blackstone admired how “the crowd seemed to span the generations, a multitude that reminded” one protester “of the anti-war movement's glory days.” Blackstone, however, did allow one woman to blast the “naiveté” of protesters.
Garofalo showed the most animosity toward President Bush, telling Kurtz in a quote checked against the tape by MRC analyst Patrick Gregory:
“Now, another thing I'd like to bring up, if I may, that is a glaring hypocrisy — George W. Bush is vehemently pro-life, seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade, will not, seeks to ban scientific research as pertains to some stem cell research, cloning, because of the sanctity of human life. Yet at the same time he is asking us to drop bombs on Iraqi civilians. According to the United Nations, up to a million people will be killed and/or wounded in this war. So, apparently, if you are a pre-sentient mass of cells, this country will protect you and your rights to the nth degree. If you have made the mistake of becoming an Iraqi citizen, apparently we can just drop bombs on you with impunity.”
Despite such ludicrousness, Garofalo, thanks to her celebrity status, gets plenty of air time on TV to spout her left-wing venom.
Monday's “Media Notes” column by Kurtz in the Washington Post nicely summarized most of what Garofalo said on Reliable Sources.
Garofalo, who was once part of the Saturday Night Live cast, went on to co-star in HBO's Larry Sanders Show. Since then, she's done a lot of small roles and starred in a few semi-successful movies. For a photo of her and a rundown of her roles, see her Internet Movie Database page.
Her numerous TV appearances to complain about how she's not being taken seriously are giving her a nice career-advancing boost in visibility.
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
