Janeane Garofalo Hates Racism…Sometimes

Janeane Garofalo, famous for such deep thoughts as:

• “Is being an idiot like being high all the time?”
• “When I see the American flag, I go, ‘Oh my God, you’re insulting me.’”
• “When Communist U.S.S.R. was a superpower, the world was better off. The right-wing media is trying to marginalize the peace movement.”

That last one is my favorite.  Because, you know, Communist U.S.S.R. was known for peace and making the world a better place.  Those KGB peace-niks, always handing out flowers and puppies.  Peaceful governments that make the world a better place typically collapse, so I see her point. 

Anyway, in an effort to prove that you can talk with your rear-end in your mouth, Janeane has gone on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann to discuss the recent Tax Day Tea Parties.  Let me outline her thought pattern for you:

• Racists become confused and angry at speech that doesn’t make sense to them.  (Not to generalize, but sure, there may be some truth in that)
• The tea parties are “not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes,”.  (Hmmm, since the entire message of the campaign and every protest sign I saw was anti-tax, I’m going to disagree here.  So, what was it about?)
• “they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all.”  (So, the people attending the Tax Day Tea Parties don’t know their history?  Amazing that Janeane knows all of these people and their facility with historical events.  I’d hate to think a progressive thinker like her would make a sweeping generalization.)
• “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.“  (Wow…just…wow.  It seems she just can’t fathom that so many people don’t like the heavy-handed, socialist policies of the Obama administration, so she makes up some other reason for it.)
• “the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe.  So their synapses are misfiring.”  (This statement is chock full of idiocy.  Not only does she equate a Republican with an average white power activist, she attempts, with her vast knowledge of neurology, to diagnose all people who disagree with her as having a mental problem.  Hello, Mr. Orwell.)
• Later on she says, “because as I’ve said, the Republican hype and the conservative movement has now crystallized into the white power movement.” (I wonder how Alan Keyes feels about that.)

What’s disturbing about her logic is that she automatically jumps to calling anybody who disagrees with an Obama policy a racist.  That’s right, we must hate black people.

Thank you, Ms. Garofalo, for taking the debate off of the actual issue of taxes, deficits and other important arguments and trying to make this about racism.  Thank you for appealing to the lowest common denominator and avoiding any actual substantive debate.  You’ve proved yourself a master of irony with this quote from the same interview:

“Fox News loves to foment this anti-intellectualism because that’s their bread and butter”

Let’s get one thing straight.  My disagreement with Pres. Obama has nothing to do with the color of his skin.  It has everything to do with his backwards, addled policies that have no foundation in any kind of reality and serve only to exacerbate problems, assuage some portion of the populace and ensure further government power and control.

Were Obama not the president, perhaps I would enjoy a healthy debate with him.  But he has too much responsibility and power for me to blithely accept what he says and does and say nothing.  His economic, social and foreign policies are all wrong-headed and will cause much more harm to this nation than they could ever do good.

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